


#haunted

by Misfit_McCoward



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Language Barrier, M/M, ghost!viktor, ghosts have their own memes, some writers make outlines for their stories; this one just has a list of bad ghost puns, soulmate AU where when your soulmate dies they become a ghost and haunt you
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-10-14 04:10:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10528683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misfit_McCoward/pseuds/Misfit_McCoward
Summary: When you die, you haunt your soulmate. Yuuri thought this sounded romantic until (no longer) living legend Viktor Nikiforov's ghost showed up-- now he just sort of wants to leap out the nearest window.





	1. #goingghost

**Author's Note:**

> I read this concept for a soulmate AU on tumblr but have been unable to find the original post. :( Thanks to cutthroatpixie for answering questions like "what do you say when you die in russian" and "can a ghost human eat a ghost cow." Also for puns.
> 
> EDIT: Actually I got the idea from [this soulmate AU writing prompt meme.](http://andhungry.tumblr.com/post/150057501455/soulmate-au-prompts-send-a-number-for-a-starter)

Viktor Nikiforov died at 10:32pm in Saint Petersburg, Russia which meant his ghost appeared in Hasetsu, Japan at 4:32am.

 

Yuuri Katsuki, who was sleeping at 4:32am in Hasetsu, Japan, woke up to a stranger’s voice yelling  _ Дерьмо!! _ which was, as far as Yuuri knew, not a real word. 

 

The non-words continued, and Yuuri pushed his comforter off to squint down at the end of his bed. His idol of over a decade was standing there, staring at his hands and swearing in nonsense words that were probably actually the very real language of Russian. 

 

Yuuri did not immediately panic. His walls were covered in photos and posters of Viktor Nikiforov. Waking up to his silver hair and firm jawline wasn’t out of the ordinary for Yuuri.

 

Then Yuuri realized his posters shouldn’t be animated and started screaming. 

 

Viktor, who had seen he was in a dark bedroom standing in front of a sleeping person, was completely distracted by the fact that he could see anything at all through his previously solid hands. When the sleeping person moved, he barely registered it. When the no longer sleeping person screamed, he did the ghost-version of jumping out of his skin, which meant the lights flickered briefly and all the pictures on the wall fell to ground. 

 

“Um,” said Yuuri. He was crouching on his bed and sweaty. He had grabbed his pillow at some point, perhaps to protect himself from the... ghost.  _ Viktor Nikiforov’s _ ghost.  _ Viktor Nikiforov’s ghost _ was in his room. Was this some sort of stressed-induced hallucination?

 

“English?” Viktor asked tentatively. 

 

Yuuri nodded. His heart was pounding.  _ What the fuck _ .

 

“I appear to have died,” Viktor said. He sounded sheepish. Also like he was speaking from another room, because Yuuri’s hearing went all muffled when he was panicking. 

 

A panicking mind tends to hone in on extraneous details, and so instead of realizing, like a normal person might, that the appearance of Viktor Nikiforov’s ghost in your bedroom probably made him your soulmate, Yuuri’s brain zoomed in on the fact that Viktor’s ghostly freak-out had knocked all the framed pictures over, but the posters were still up on the wall for all to see.

 

_ No! _ Yuuri’s brain screamed, and his mouth screamed, “Out! Get out!”  

 

He chucked his pillow at him. 

 

“Uh,” said Viktor, “I don’t–”

 

Yuuri lept through him and ripped a poster from the wall. 

 

“Huh,” Viktor said, and stared down at his own non-corporeal body in morbid fascination while Yuuri tore all the posters off the walls. 

 

In the end, Viktor didn’t get out of Yuuri’s room, but Mari did barge in swinging a broom like a baseball bat. 

 

“GUESTS ARE NOT ALLOWED IN RESIDENTIAL AREAS,” she bellowed in Japanese, and Viktor, not understanding a word of it, smiled winningly at her.

 

“Oh,” Mari gasped. “Oh,  _ Yuuri _ . I’m so sorry.”

 

It took a moment for Yuuri to figure out why she was sorry, then he realized that meeting Viktor Nikiforov’s ghost meant that Viktor Nikiforov was  _ dead _ . 

 

And that he was Yuuri’s soulmate.

 

Yuuri’s brain shut down. 

 

\--

 

Mari woke Yuuri’s parents, who took the news that their son’s soulmate had died (and shown up to haunt Yuuri for the rest of his mortal life) much better than Yuuri himself had. They gathered downstairs, still in their pajamas, and Hiroko hummed while she made them an early breakfast. Mari managed to explain to Viktor where exactly he was using her high school English, since Yuuri was too busy trying not to hyperventilate and googling things like “help my soulmate is haunting” and “what to do when die.” 

 

“We need to alert the authorities,” Yuuri announced. Viktor cocked his head, and Yuuri repeated it in English. “Google says,” he added. 

 

Yuuri desperately wanted to go back to his room, hide in his comforter, and read this clickbait article about people who turned out to have celebrity soulmates instead of calling the police about Viktor Nikiforov’s ghost, or even thinking about Viktor Nikiforov’s ghost, but unfortunately being haunted meant Viktor would have to join him in hiding forever in his room.

 

Mentally saying a solemn goodbye to all his privacy, Yuuri dutifully called the police and reported a new ghost.

 

“Russian, you say?” the officer said. “How annoying. We’ll call national. Can I have your contact information?”

 

“Yuuri,” Viktor said, poking his shoulder. His finger dipped through the fabric of Yuuri’s shirt and sent chills up his arm. “Can you do me a favor?”

 

“Uh… y-yeah,” Yuuri agreed, hoping the favor wasn’t something like “please have me exorcised, I’ve recognized you from the Grand Prix Final and I don’t deal with second-rate skaters.”

 

Luckily, Viktor just wanted him to update his twitter. 

 

“Mm, put ‘Rumors of my death have not been exaggerated.’” He paused, thoughtful. “Hashtag going ghost, hashtag found the boo.”

 

Yuuri squinted at him. “Are you sure that’s how you want to announce your death to the world? You don’t want to… to call family first, or something?”

 

“It’s easier this way,” Viktor replied. “Besides, ghost voices don’t carry over the phone half the time. Oh, post a selfie of us!”

 

The selfie came out as a very uncomfortable looking Yuuri with a glowing orb next to his face.

 

“It’s perfect,” Viktor pronounced. “Post it!”

 

“It looks like the beginning of a horror film,” Yuuri protested.

 

“How else am I going to share my soulmate with the world?” Viktored pouted.

 

Yuuri flushed bright red.  _ Soulmates _ . It… he… okay. Okay. He could do this.

 

Three selfies later, and Yuuri deemed the photo good enough for Viktor’s twitter. 

 

“Ah,” said Viktor, his shoulder phasing through Yuuri’s as he peered down at the phone. “I’m so lucky to have such a beautiful soulmate.”

 

Yuuri felt his face turn some color that was either green or red or both– maybe even blue, he might have stopped breathing sometime during this interaction– and nearly dropped his phone.

 

“I’m– um– I’m going for a run. To clear my mind,” he said. 

 

Viktor came with him, since he was an immortal spirit bound forever to his soulmate. _Great, just_ _great_ , Yuuri thought. 

 

\--

 

Every once in a while, Yuuri decided to “take a run to clear his mind,” completely forgetting that running-to-clear-my-mind was something people in books did, and not actually something that helped him, personally. He didn’t mind running, exactly; he usually ran a few kilometers in the mornings, although his recent bout of depression had killed his workout schedule. But he didn’t actually  _ like _ running. It was boring, monotonous, and let him dwell too much on his own traitorous thoughts. 

 

Today, his traitorous thoughts were basically:  _ AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. _

 

Viktor glided along behind him, completely in awe of his new ghostly ability to fly. He would occasionally admire the scenery– Hasetsu was, afterall, a picturesque seaside town, and Yuuri’s back muscles were also very picturesque, even with the love handles– but mostly he just stared down at his feet, hovering ten centimetres of the ground. 

 

After running the length of the beach promenade, Yuuri decided to hop the fence and take to the sand. 

 

“Careful running on sand,” Viktor warned, speaking for the first time. 

 

Yuuri, who had already slowed to a walk, rolled one shoulder and headed to the water. 

 

“How’d you die, anyway?” Yuuri asked, stopping just short of the dark waterline in the sand. The wind tossed his hair around about, but left Viktor untouched. 

 

“It’s a bit embarrassing,” Viktor said. “I was texting and driving.”

 

This prompted a dry, humorless laugh from Yuuri. 

 

“I’d be mad at you,” Yuuri confessed, “if I learned from television that you’d done something so careless.”

 

“I know, I know,” Viktor sighed. “Chris just sends such compelling voice messages.”

 

Yuuri frowned. “Christophe Giacometti?” He asked. He was proud to say he knew about that friendship through personal observation and not his obsessive following of Viktor’s media presence. 

 

...although Viktor probably assumed it was from online quasi-stalking, since he didn’t seem to recognize Yuuri at all from the Grand Prix Final.

 

“Yes,” Viktor answered, making a completely useless motion as if trying to kick the sand. “He seemed very upset I was thinking about retiring. He made up a song about it, and I needed to tell him his voice was better drunk.”

 

“You’re  _ retiring _ ?” Yuuri gasped, offended. 

 

Viktor’s eyebrows stitched together. “Yuuri, I’m  _ dead. _ ”

 

Yuuri considered punching himself in the face before inserting his foot directly into his mouth. Instead, he ran back home on soft sand, his quads screaming in protest. 

 

\--

 

Yuuri returned home, demanded Viktor wait outside the bathroom while he bathed, and then discovered over two hundred notifications on his phone. 

 

Thirty-seven were from Phichit across various forms of social media. He’d sent Yuuri eight different news reports on Viktor’s passing: two of them were released before Viktor’s tweet and contemplated if Viktor’s ghost had appeared somewhere, and four of them included bios of Yuuri himself, along with rude conjecture over whether or not Yuuri will “share Viktor with the world,” and “Nikiforov’s spirit’s eventual fate.” One dismissed the tweet as a hacker. One of the articles was in Thai, and Yuuri could only guess at the written content based on that fact that it included his selfie with the Viktor-orb, since Yuuri didn’t know how to even begin reading Thai. 

 

Phichit had also sent a snapchat and two tweets that were just photos of the selfie on Phichit’s computer screen, all taken from different angles, with various forms of  _ WTF? _ written across them.

 

The most recent whatsapp from Phichit read:  _ DETAILS, KATSUKI!!! _

 

There were some concerned messages and missed calls from Celestino, various Hasetsu residents, and skaters (including a DM from Cristophe Giacometti, which Yuuri was too sick to his stomach to open). The rest were from strangers.

 

Very carefully, Yuuri turned off his phone and set it down on his bedside table. 

 

“I’m going to make lunch,” he said.

 

“Okay,” Viktor agreed, and they both stared at each other for a few moments. Yuuri couldn’t help but think about how long Viktor had been trapped in the hallway while he bathed, not able to move further than a few meters from Yuuri.

 

“It’s normal to narrate your life when you’re first being haunted,” Viktor ventured. He sounded unsure of himself for the first time since his appearance. “You don’t have to feel like you’re controlling me just by living your life.”

 

Yuuri was not an expert on soulmate-ghosts, but being haunted was common enough that pretty much everyone had at least a few ghosts in their lives. During the tourist high-season, his family’s inn used to hire a cleaning woman named Kyoko who was haunted by a teenager named Mayumi. Discrimination against ghosts and their soulmates was illegal, but Kyoko still had a hard time finding employment– the fact that Mayumi had died when she was only sixteen made people uncomfortable, and so did her penchant for whining about being tied to Kyoko while Kyoko had to do “boring” work. 

 

It wasn’t fair to Kyoko, Yuuri thought, that she couldn’t just live her life. But it also wasn’t fair to Mayumi, who couldn’t go off and just be a teenager. She was stuck forever with what Kyoko picked out for them. And Yuuri didn’t ever,  _ ever _ want that for his soulmate. 

 

“Okay,” he said, tightly, and went to see what they had in the kitchen. 

 

\--

 

“Ah,” Viktor said as Yuuri added leftover rice from breakfast to an omelet. “That looks  _ delicious _ .”

 

He then proceeded to watch Yuuri very closely as he ate it. Creepily closely. Yuuri wondered how obvious it would be if he turned around and ate with his back to Viktor. 

 

“I’m going to miss eating,” Viktor lamented. Yuuri paused, chopsticks halfway to his mouth. He hadn’t even thought about that. There were a lot of memes about ‘don’t eat pizza in front of your soulmate.’

 

Unfortunately, any guilt Yuuri felt was immediately squashed by what Viktor said next. “Luckily, you’ll be missing it with me, since you’re on a diet starting today.”

 

“Huh?” Yuuri said. 

 

“Well you have to drop a few kilos before the season starts,” Viktor said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. 

 

“What… what season?” Yuuri asked. HIs stomach was churning. If Viktor had planned to sabotage his lunch, he’d succeeded. 

 

“The  _ skating season _ ,” Viktor stressed. “You’re going to be the comeback story of the year!”

 

Yuuri hadn’t even been sure Viktor knew he  _ was _ a skater; this was either a dream come true or his ultimate nightmare. He thought about getting up and running away. That wouldn’t work though, because Viktor would just be dragged along with him. 

 

“I’ve heard of ghost coaches before,” Viktor continued, oblivious to Yuuri’s raising panic. “So it’s definitely legal. We’ll have to get over some logistical problems, but I’m sure we can manage.” 

 

Yuuri thought about getting up and running away anyway, even if Viktor came with him. Viktor continued to muse out loud about coaching strategies and how he’d have to adjust them for being a ghost. 

  
Yuuri’s stomach flipped. Was this nerves? Happiness? He didn’t know, but it put running out of the question. 


	2. #textsfromtheotherside

It turned out there was a lot of paperwork associated with being a ghost. Viktor still owned everything he owned in life, but they had to travel to the Russian embassy in Tokyo to verify that he was, indeed, the ghost of Viktor Nikiforov, and that he was, in fact, haunting Yuuri Katsuki. 

 

Viktor had apparently cut ties with all living family, which the consulate worker they talked to called “lucky” because there would be no arguments over how many legal rights Yuuri inherited as Viktor’s soulmate. Yuuri thought it was sad, and Viktor refused to elaborate.

 

There were more things to do– dying was an acceptable excuse to break Viktor’s rental contract, for example, and all his insurance policies had to be updated– but Viktor didn’t seem interested in paperwork and legal shenanigans. All he wanted to talk about was skating. And Yuuri.

 

“Who was your first love?” Viktor asked one day, out of the blue. Yuuri jerked and ruined the stretch he was doing. 

 

“Uh….” he said. 

 

“Hm. Then what’s your favorite food?” Viktor asked, as if that question carried the same weight. “Mine was spaghetti. Ah, and my first date I had when I was fifteen...”

 

Yuuri went back into his stretch. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to keep skating, at least not professionally. Viktor had ignored him when he’d voiced his doubts and insisted he follow the workout regimen he’d designed. 

 

(Viktor had also insisted he visit the Ice Castle, and had had a very long chat with Yuuko about when they could use the rink, and how much advance time they needed to reserve it. Yuuri had just stood there wanting to melt into a puddle.)

 

As a result of Viktor’s blasé nature, Yuuri spent a lot of time and money on international calls. Viktor’s former coach Yakov– who was several of the many missed calls Yuuri had ignored that first day– had volunteered to take care of things in St Petersburg. Yuuri had to handle most of the calls himself, since Viktor’s ghost voice over the phone sounded like the screams of tormented souls. 

 

So Yakov had Viktor’s possessions shipped in boxes to Hasetsu, and Viktor practiced ghost-levitation by throwing their contents around the Katsuki’s storage room. 

 

“Oops, sorry,” he said as his attempt to psychically open a box shot a cloud of packing peanuts into the air. 

 

Mari, who had helped clean up the explosion of dress shirts he’d caused not thirty minutes earlier, excused herself for a smoke break. As she left, Yuuri spotted a button still stuck in her bleached hair. 

 

“I can’t believe you made Yakov send _ everything _ ,” Yuuri said, picking packing peanuts out of his own hair. “You don’t need clothes anymore.” He immediately realized how rude that sounded and tried to backtrack. “I mean, I understand keeping some for sentimentality, but some of these socks have holes in them.”

 

“I thought it’d be easier to sort through them in person,” Viktor said. He frowned at the box he’d just opened, and it shot into the air and collided with the ceiling. Yuuri yelped and covered his head as the trophies contained within rained down on them. 

 

“Still no phone,” Viktor observed. 

 

“What are you going to do with your phone?” Yuuri did not comment on the fact that Viktor had literally died with it in his hands. 

 

“I can’t have you typing all my tweets for me.”

 

Yuuri rolled his eyes. Viktor was constantly whining at him to tweet things for him. Some of the highlights included “Little known #ghostfact: sticking your hand through the salt shaker feels like sticking a fork in an outlet” and “If @chrisgiacometti lured me to my death with his voice, does that make him a siren? #giacomermaid”

 

(Chris had sent a long, regretful apology to Viktor for distracting him while driving. Yuuri’s webcam wasn’t equipped to record beings on the spectral plane, so he’d had to mediate a heartfelt conversation between Chris and Viktor, which somehow turned into lewd jokes that he wished he could type with his eyes closed.)

 

(Chris had also sent Yuuri a DM asking if he wanted pictures of Viktor’s butt. Which. No. But also yes?)

 

The thing was, while ghosts  _ could _ handle their own social media by possessing electronics, Viktor could barely move an object without ripping it to shreds or sending it flying across the room. Yuuri highly doubted he’d be able to do such an advanced haunting for months, at least. 

 

“FOUND IT!” Viktor suddenly crowded, and a beat up iPhone shot across the room, collided with a lamp, and clattered to the ground. Its cracked screen flickered blue a few times before dying. 

 

“I think we should charge it,” Yuuri said. 

 

Viktor managed to get the charger and plug adaptor to the corner with the outlet without breaking anything, but he couldn’t get the finer movements to hook everything together. 

 

Yuuri plugged it all in and turned the phone on– ignoring the scrape marks he doubted Viktor had accrued during life– and was fully expecting Cyrillic. 

 

“Why is this in Japanese?” he asked. 

 

“Oh!” Viktor said. “I was starting to learn. Could you connect to the wifi please?”

 

Yuuri did, and the phone immediately lit up with hundreds of notifications. Viktor peered over him and they sat there in silence for several minutes as the phone kept loading new notifications. 

 

“There’s…” Viktor said, “ _ so much to do _ .”

 

He lunged for the phone, passing through Yuuri and giving him the chills. The phone dropped to the floor, and Viktor squatted over it, poking it with his ghost fingers. 

 

“I’ll just leave you to that, then,” Yuuri said, and went back to organizing Viktor’s things into piles of “seems important,” “maybe,” and “why did Yakov waste the postage on this.”

 

\--

 

Two days after the packages arrived, Minako showed up for an early Saturday afternoon drinking session trailed by a foreign teenager with a suitcase and a dog. He was blonde and glowering, and the rolling suitcase had an oblong box tied to the top. 

 

“ _ VIKTOR WA DOKO DESU KA _ ?” the foreigner demanded, exactly the way someone might yell an exceptionally vicious swear. 

 

“Viktor’s at the Ice Castle with Yuuri,” Hiroko said helpfully, and the teenager fumed at her. 

 

“Viktor wa,” he seethed out, fist curling on the dog’s leash, “ _ doko desu ka? _ ”

 

“That’s the only Japanese he knows,” Minako explained with the drawl of someone who was quite definitively done dealing with the blonde kid. “He was wandering around town hollering it at everyone. He’s Yuri Plisetsky, Viktor’s junior rinkmate. He came to deliver Viktor’s dog–”

 

“ _ VIKTOR WA _ –”

 

“Shut  _ up _ , kid, the adults are talking,” Minako snapped at him in English. Hers was pretty rusty, but apparently frustration with children could bring out the best in anyone’s linguistic abilities. 

 

“Ah, Yuuri mentioned they’d have to make arrangements for the dog. I didn’t know they’d settled it already though,” Hiroko answered. She turned Yuri and said, very politely, the only English sentence she knew: “Welcome to Yu-topia Katsuki.”

 

Yuri looked like he might punch someone. 

 

“Viktor is with Katsuki Yuuri at the skate rink,” Minako explained. “You should wait for him here.”

 

“No,” Yuri answered, stomping his foot. “Viktor made me a promise, and I’m not going to let him get out of it, dead or not.”

 

“Amazing,” Minako muttered. Then, louder: “Well  _ I’m _ not bringing you, so you either get lost finding it by yourself or–”

 

“FINE!” Yuri answered, and tossed the dog’s lead to Hiroko. “Her name is Makkachin and she likes belly rubs and I’M the one she recognizes as Yuri!”

 

He turned and marched out of the inn, abandoning his suitcase and its weird box where it stood. 

 

“Did he say he wanted a room?” Hiroko asked after a beat, eyeing the suitcase.

 

“I don’t know how to translate what he said,” Minako replied. 

 

\--

 

Yuuri tied his skates while Viktor chatted animatedly with the Nishigori triplets. ( _ Very _ animatedly, because they didn’t know any English and Viktor barely had a beginner’s vocabulary in Japanese. Most of his conversations that weren’t with Yuuri were done half in pantomime.)

 

Yuuri actually hadn’t skated in front of Viktor yet– there’d barely been time, and when there  _ had _ been he’d made up excuses. Talking to Viktor about logistical stuff was fine, but the moment conversation turned to personal matters or figure skating, Yuuri’s mind froze on him. He mostly just stewed in embarrassment and gave weird, jittering answers when Viktor asked him personal questions. 

 

He’d always thought… well, he thought he’d  _ marry _ his soulmate. There was no reliable method of confirming your soulmate until one of you died, but a statistically disproportionate number of people ended up married to or dating their soulmate. There were a lot of theories about this: that your soulmate could change over time, or that people were just naturally attracted to their soulmate. Yuuri always hoped to be one of  _ those _ people. 

 

Now it turned out that not only was he not going to get that dream, but the person he was most compatible with in the entire world was his long-time idol who had probably watched Yuuri give the worst performance of his life at the Grand Prix Final. 

 

Also, Viktor watched him sleep, and he didn’t know how to feel about that. 

 

“Yuuri,” Viktor practically sang. “Yuuko says you have choreography to  _ Sex Bomb _ .”

 

Yuuri jumped and nearly fell over because he’d forgotten he was wearing skates and not regular shoes. He grabbed the lockers to steady himself. 

 

“Can I see?” Viktor purred, and Yuuri felt the bottom drop out from his stomach. 

 

“I… uh… hm,” he answered intelligently. 

 

“We’ll prep the sound system!” the triplets chorused, because apparently they could selectively understand English when it would ruin Yuuri’s life. 

 

Twenty minutes later, Yuuri was standing on the ice wondering where his life had gone wrong, while Viktor’s ghost beamed at him and the beginning the notes of  _ Sex Bomb _ played.

 

Yuuri and Phichit had come up with it their first year together. They’d stayed late at the rink, broken into Celestino’s box wine supply, and had had a very solid bonding experience. Yuuri didn’t remember the routine super well– he was pretty sure it involved more gyrating than his sober self was capable of. 

 

Yuuri cocked a hip, and the music shrieked into an unbearable volume before blowing out. 

 

Briefly, Yuuri thought that some divine force had intervened, but then Yuuko yelled, “NIKIFOROV! I told you it wasn’t ghost-proofed!”

 

“Oops,” Viktor said, and Yuuri wondered if ghosts could blush. “I guess I got excited.”

 

“For  _ what _ ?” Yuuri spluttered. 

 

Viktor crossed the distance between them, toes brushing the ice as he floated. “For  _ you _ .”

 

Yuuri stared. He had no idea why Viktor had so much faith in him. Seriously, no idea. But maybe he should have some faith in Viktor too.  _ Soulmates _ , after all. 

 

“Okay,” Yuuri said slowly. “Okay. Um. I’ve been working on something. To try to get through my, uh, slump.”

 

Viktor looked so eager it actually hurt. Yuuri hoped he wouldn’t regret this. He gestured for Viktor to move back to the edge of the rink, and took the starting position for Viktor’s free skate. 

 

\--

 

When he finished, Yuuri was panting and terrified of even looking at Viktor. If he disappointed the ghost that haunted him forever, that would be… really awkward, to say the least. 

 

Instead, he looked at Yuuko. She was shivering even in her coat, because the temperature of the entire building had dropped several degrees. 

 

When he did finally summon the courage to look at Viktor, he was staring at him with an unreadable look on his face. His hands were positioned as if gripping the banister, although his fingers passed noticeably through it. 

 

“Viktor?” Yuuri asked, skating over to join him. “What did you, um– what did you–”

 

“I think I died again,” Viktor whispered, very intensely, and Yuuri had no idea what to make of that. 

 

“You’ve slain me with your beauty,” he clarified, and Yuuri felt a smile creep across his face. 

 

“Тьфу,” someone snorted, the sound echoing through the empty seats. Yuuri and Viktor both turned to see a skinny blonde kid glaring at them from across the ice. “Viktor! Stop being disgusting with your boyfriend!”

 

“Ah, Yuri, what’re you doing here?” Viktor called back, and Yuuri had sudden flashbacks to being cornered by “Russia’s Punk” in a bathroom. 

 

Yuri made a big show of stomping around the rink– ignoring Yuuko and the triplets as he passed– and marched right up to Viktor to scowl into his transparent face. 

 

“To collect on my promise,” he growled. 

 

“That sounds serious,” Viktor agreed. “Could you remind me what promise that was?”

 

Yuri made several choking noises and then went on a rant about Viktor’s promise to choreograph a routine for him. It ended with a pout. 

 

“Sorry, sorry,” Viktor said. “I remember now. Hmm, I wonder how I can choreograph when I’m dead?”

 

“How hard can it be?” Yuri snapped back. 

 

“Well,” Viktor said, “I don’t seem to follow the same laws of physics anymore.”

 

Yuri looked, again, like he might punch someone. 

 

“But,” Viktor continued, “I’ll have to figure out something anyway if I’m going to coach Yuuri, so I’ll keep my promise.”

 

“You…” Yuri spluttered, “you’re  _ actually _ going to coach him?”

 

“Of course!” Viktor answered brightly, “didn’t you see that excellent performance just now from my Yuuri? Speaking of which, you’re going to need a nickname.”

 

“Why–” Yuri started to say. 

 

“YURIO!” chorused the triplets, who had no concept of Russian naming systems. 

 

“Brilliant,” agreed Viktor, who absolutely did understand Russian naming systems.

 

“WHAT,” yelped the newly-christened Yurio. 

 

\--

 

On the walk home, Yuuri checked to phone to see that Chris had tweeted: “Woke up to find @VictorNickiforovsGhost texted me ‘Hhh.’ Just ‘Hhh.’ #textsfromtheotherside #atleastautocorrectcapitalizedit”

 

It was accompanied by a screen shot. @KingJJ had subtweeted “My girlfriend’s soulmate wants u to know his 1st #textsfromtheotherside was ‘grains’ followed by 20+ alligator emojis MDR.”

 

“Aw,” Viktor said when Yuuri showed it to him. “I worked all night on that.”

 

“What was it supposed to say?” Yurio asked, getting out his own phone.

 

“‘Hello from the other side.’ And then some music notes.”

 

Yurio rolled his eyes exaggeratedly as he typed something. Yuuri, who’d opened Twitter to follow his new temporary housemate, saw the tweet he’d just added: “Grandma doesnt understand emojis but she can do ASCII art #ghostpro #textsfromtheotherside”

 

\--

 

When they arrived at Yu-topia, Minako was five beers into her evening and yelling with Yuuri’s father and some locals at the soccer match on television.

 

A large brown poodle was sprawled across the back of the room, and its ears perked when they entered. For a moment, Yuuri thought Vicchan had come back as his dogmate, like in that cartoon show. But then Viktor yelled “MAKKACHIN!” and dove for the dog. 

 

He passed through the dog, of course, but Makkachin yipped and got to her feet, jumping excitedly and wagging her tail as Viktor futilely attempted to embrace her. 

 

(The patrons of Yu-topia ignored them. Soccer was usually more interesting than ghost shenanigans.)

 

“Makkachin, no!” Viktor wailed, dramatically waving his arm through her head. “I’m dying again.  _ Thrice _ I’ve died!” 

 

The two ended up in a weird dog-ghost dance and Viktor cried some Russian that made Yurio blush and scuff his foot on the ground. 

 

“It wasn’t a big deal,” he muttered. “And  _ technically _ I stole her.”

 

“You did  _ what _ ?” Yuuri asked, but then his mother appeared at the door to the kitchen. She gestured for them to follow her out of the pub area of the resort and into a corridor. 

 

“Um, Small Yuri,” she started politely.

 

“Eh?” Yurio replied, less politely. 

 

“ _ Ima kara, Yurio desu _ ,” Viktor said helpfully. 

 

“Eh?” Hiroko said. 

 

Yuuri sighed. “We’ve nicknamed him Yurio.” Turning to Viktor, he continued in English, “Do you want me to see if I can find you more language lessons? They say it’s harder for ghosts, but there are specialized teachers–”

 

“Pft, what’s the point?” Yurio cut in. “You should just move to Russia.”

 

“Um, Yurio,” Hiroko said, raising her voice slightly. 

 

“ _ What? _ ”

 

Hiroko glanced at Yuuri, and he prepared to translate something weird. “What was in the box you had?”

 

Yuuri translated, and Yurio’s eyes went wide. “Oh no.”

 

“Toshiya dropped it moving,” Hiroko said apologetically. “He sometimes has a weakness in his legs, you know, and he said he heard something shatter–”

 

Yuuri was attempting to do real-time interpreting, but he only got through ‘My father dropped it’ before Yurio made an outraged noise that could only be described as a ‘scream-yodel.’ He then turned and sprinted out of them room. 

 

“Does he know where he’s going?” Yuuri asked. 

 

“I don’t think so,” Hiroko answered. “Earlier he only dropped off his bag and left immediately.”

 

“What was in the box?” Viktor wondered out loud, and Yuuri repeated the question to his mother. 

 

“It didn’t break!” Hiroko said immediately, which Yuuri thought was a roundabout way to answer the question. “But an ornamental piece chipped off– which is what your father heard– so he opened it.”

 

Yuuri was getting good at interpreting, as he was constantly muttering translations to Viktor. 

 

“I just wanted to explain why we opened a guest’s luggage,” Hiroko finished. 

 

“It sounds like you did break it though,” Viktor countered. 

  
“I meant the contents were unharmed!” Hiroko explained, her usual cheer returning. “That’s what’s important. After all, it was an urn.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey friends! I thought I should give you a warning that I won't have computer access for about three weeks, so no writing for a while. :( BUT, if you want to talk about weird ghost headcanons, or things that happen on this plane of existence, you can hmu on tumblr (username exemplarybehaviour). 
> 
> Loved it or hated, drop me a comment and tell me why. :)


	3. #HHH

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spot the Naruto reference. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Yuri Plisetsky had stolen two things. The first was Viktor’s dog, which was rude but not a big deal in the long run. The other thing Yurio stole was Viktor’s ashes. 

 

“This has got to be a felony,” Yuuri said. “In at least one of our countries it’s a felony.” 

 

“I declared it in Tokyo,” Yurio defended. “You’re allowed to travel with ashes. It’s fine.”

 

Yuuri had no idea what international regulations on travelling with human remains were. Yurio had obviously gone through customs and it had turned out alright. That wasn’t what Yuuri was concerned about.

 

“You  _ stole _ Viktor’s  _ remains _ ,” Yuuri stressed. 

 

“And I brought them to him,” Yurio snapped back. 

 

“You can’t just  _ steal people _ .” Yuuri’s voice was gaining a hysteric quality. He had no idea why everyone else was so calm. His mom was fussing over the cracked urn while his dad made offers to glue the missing pieces back on. Viktor just floated there, staring at the urn with a far away look in his eyes. 

 

Yurio huffed and pulled his jacket up around his ears, even though it was quite warm in the room. “You’re sure nothing spilled?” This was directed at the crowd around the urn.

 

The Katsukis, who didn’t understand the question, ignored him. Viktor glanced over listlessly. It took a few seconds for the question to register, and then his usual charming smile slid back into place. 

 

“Just the handles broke off,” Viktor said warmly. “So you don’t have to worry that your carelessness cost me the last of my physical form.”

 

Yurio scowled. 

 

When asked what he wanted done with his body, Viktor had refused to even look at any pictures and declared he wanted to be cremated and placed in the most ornate urn Yakov could find. The most ornate urn Yavok could find, it turned out, looked like it should be a decorative flower pot in some royal family’s garden. It was covered in delicately crafted leaves and flowers, which branched off to form two handles that would fit comfortably in exactly no one’s hands. Both handles had snapped off, one in three pieces and the other in one, and a flower and the tips of some leaves had chipped off as well. 

 

“Is it true,” Hiroko started, “that if you burn a ghost’s ashes, they’ll disappear?”

 

“ _ Mom _ ,” Yuuri chided, but Viktor had turned to him with an expectant little smile on his face and he translated the question anyway. 

 

“Ah,” said Viktor. “That’s a common misconception. It’s true that ashes are a common tool in exorcisms, but you’d need proper training to do anything with them.”

 

“How do you know so much about ghosts?” Yuuri asked, after he’d answered his mother. 

 

Viktor winked at him. “I  _ am _ a ghost.”

 

Yuuri pouted. It wasn’t like Viktor had received a ghost handbook when he’d died. Then again, Yuuri suspected he himself actually knew less than the norm about ghosts anyway. He’d grown up in a small town without any ghosts in his family, so most of his exposure was through television. 

 

“This is stupid,” Yurio said. “If the urn’s fine, can you get out? I’m jetlagged.”

 

“He’s jetlagged,” Yuuri told his parents. They’d all gathered in the banquet room they’d intended to put Yurio up in– they had a few actual inn rooms, but they got overnight guests so rarely these days that the rooms weren’t being kept anywhere near hospitable. 

 

“Oh! Sorry!” Hiroko said to Yurio, who looked like he was fighting back a nasty comment. “We’ll just get these things out of you way.”

 

‘These things’ included a veritable florist shop of flowers Viktor had been sent. Some of them decorated the bar, and the hotsprings, and Yuuri’s room. More of them had been left in the banquet room, and Toshiya and Yuuri scrambled to move them into the hall as Hiroko repacked the urn. 

 

Yurio glared at them as he unfolded his futon.

 

“Seriously, should we report this to the police?” Yuuri said as they left.

 

“Why do you want to report everything to the police?” Viktor asked, bemused. “It’s not like I’m going to press charges.”

 

“But…” Yuuri bit his lip. Messing with people’s remains was  _ serious _ , even if Viktor didn’t seem to mind. “Okay,” he said finally. 

 

They set the urn next to Vicchan’s shrine. 

 

\--

 

The next day, Viktor woke Yuuri by sticking his hand through his shoulder. It made Yuuri let out an embarrassing sort of yelp. 

 

“Morning,” Viktor said. “I tried to set off your alarm.”

 

Yuuri glanced over at his alarm clock. The digital display was dead and the room smelled vaguely of burnt plastic. Like a normal millennial, Yuuri used his phone for almost everything requiring a timepiece, and the sight made him giggle. 

 

“I want to try something,” Viktor said. “At the Ice Castle.”

 

“‘Kay,” Yuuri agreed. “Lemme get dressed.”

 

Yurio was still asleep when they left. Viktor assured Yuuri the young skater wasn’t going to miss anything. Yuuri still felt Yurio would be angry, but Yurio would probably find a way to be angry if Viktor came back to life and returned to Russia to be his personal trainer, so it was a moot point. 

 

At the Ice Castle, Viktor drifted through the barrier around the ice rink and then just… floated there. 

 

“Should I get my skates?” Yuuri ventured. 

 

“No, I’m just… thinking.”

 

Yuuri watched him think for a very long time. He started to wonder if he should go put on skates anyway, but moving to the lockers would drag Viktor off the ice. Thinking on the ice seemed very important to him. 

 

Then, Viktor moved. 

 

It was mesmerizing. Yuuri had seen Viktor skate hundreds– maybe thousands– of times on television and in old tapes. He’d had the privilege of seeing him skate in person. Even without music, alone in an empty rink, the sight made his breath catch. Viktor was so fluid, so beautiful, an ethereal dancer. 

 

Viktor stopped. He stared at his feet, clad in the loafers he’d died in. His shoulders dropped like he was sighing, even though his chest didn’t move with the passage of air. 

 

He started again. 

 

The movements were the same, were still beautiful, but Yuuri was able to pull himself together enough to be more critical on a second viewing. Yes, Viktor was beautiful, but this wasn’t skating. There was no friction, no tug of gravity, no tension of muscles, no fluttering of hair and clothes and pink cheeks. Viktor could move his body like he was skating, but the physics were all off. 

 

“This is inconvenient,” Viktor announced, stopping again. 

 

Yuuri managed to stop himself from saying, “Yes, death is inconvenient,” and instead said, “Let me get my skates. I’ll help.”

 

Yuuri kept some of his equipment in a locker at the Ice Castle so he wouldn’t have to drag things back and forth between the rink and home, and he hurried to lace up his skates as quickly as possible. 

 

“Okay,” he said when they were back on the ice. “Show me again, but slower.”

 

Viktor cocked his head at him, then grinned. 

 

The first motions were complicated hand gestures, which Yuuri was more than apt to copy. The footwork sent Viktor about a meter further across the ice than it realistically would with skates, but with a surprised glance at Yuuri’s feet he moved back to compensate. 

 

They went on for a few more minutes, silently copying each other. 

 

“That was clumsy,” Viktor said when they stopped. “For both of us.”

 

Yuuri stared firmly off to the left.

 

“But I think we’re getting somewhere,” Viktor continued. “Let’s try it again.”

 

Yuuri smiled at him and nodded. 

 

They went on like that for nearly an hour, with Viktor occasionally tweaking movements to fit real-world physics. It was a bit strange for Yuuri, practising without any idea what the accompanying music was like, but he felt he could get a sense of it just by watching Viktor.

 

He said as much to him, and Viktor actually laughed. “You can hear music when you watch  _ me _ ? I hear symphonies when you move.”

 

Yuuri nearly fell. 

 

\--

 

They practiced for hours. By the time Yurio showed up, grumpy and still a little jetlagged, they had moved on to other activities. 

 

“What are you doing?” Yurio demanded. “Are you even adults?”

 

Yuuri looked up from where he was squatting on the ice, phone in hand with tears of mirth in his eyes. “Hheeeh?” he said. 

 

Viktor flickered into view. He was upside down with one hand on the ice. “Yurio!” he greeted. “I figured out how to go invisible.”

 

“That’s nice,” Yurio said testily. “I’m so happy you figured out how to be invisible instead of re-figuring out how to skate.”

 

“Yuuri and I were working on that,” Viktor answered lazily, still suspended upside down. He’d also figured out how to make his hair fall like it was actually affected by gravity, which was the original point of the exercise. Yurio, of course, had no way of knowing this, and he glared comically at the pair of them. 

 

“Did you sleep well?” Yuuri asked hospitably. 

 

Yurio had, but being a moody teenager, refused to admit as much. Instead, he huffed and held up the lunch boxes Hiroko had made for them. 

 

“Your mom is too nice,” he said as if it were a grave insult. 

 

They ate sitting in the stands. 

 

“Ah, youths,” Viktor sighed. “Feeling hunger. Obeying gravity. Eating.”

 

“You know they make food for ghosts,” Yurio said, clicking his plastic chopsticks together experimentally. 

 

“Ghost food” was mostly flavored salts and iron filings. There were some other compounds that gave ghosts sensations– Viktor reported sticking his head in vinegar had felt like a warm shower– but prettily colored salts were definitely a favorite. Yuuri had bought a sampler of salts from a specialty shop in Tokyo, but Viktor hadn’t shown much interest in them. Russians apparently called ghost-salts “fish food.”

 

“That’s right,” Yuuri said conversationally, “your grandmother is a ghost, right?”

 

Yurio nodded once. “She haunts my grandpa. Twenty years of the married life, thirty years of the married death, she keeps saying.” He paused, glaring at his food. “Anyway, Viktor, stop looking at your boyfriend like you want to eat him. It’s embarrassing.”

 

Viktor smirked, and Yuuri turned bright red. Fortunately, Viktor had enough tact to not make sexual innuendos in front of a fifteen year old, and Yuuri’s dignity was spared. 

 

\--

 

“The hall is completely filled with flowers,” Yurio complained when he came out for dinner. 

 

“It’s because you’re taking up too much space,” Viktor said. “We had them in the banquet room, and now we have to put you there.”

 

Yuuri refrained from pointing out that the flowers would normally go in their store room, except that Viktor refused to throw away any of his many useless possessions. (Seriously, he had a marble bust of an unknown man. Who did that? Who lived like that?)

 

Mari watched their conversation with narrowed eyes. The arrival of Yurio had really tested the limits of her meager English skills. 

 

“Yurio,” she said carefully, “is a freeloader.”

 

Yurio choked on his tea. 

 

“It’s okay,” Mari continued. “You are a handsome freeloader. Lots of opportunity for improvement.”

 

“What does that  _ mean _ ?” Yurio demanded. 

 

Viktor poked his finger through Yuuri’s pickles and giggled. Yuuri’s pickles that were in his chopsticks. Yuuri’s pickles that he was currently putting into his mouth. 

 

Yuuri also laughed, spitting the pickles across the table.

 

“How sweet,” Hiroko said good naturedly. At the same time, Yurio yelled, “WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS?”

 

“The vinegar feels funny,” Viktor said, placing his hand down over Yuuri’s dish of pickled vegetables. 

 

“I think there’s also a lot of salt in them,” Yuuri said. Then switching to Japanese he said, “Mom, Viktor likes tsukemono.” 

 

Viktor was quickly given his own plate of pickles, and he spent the rest of the meal playing with them with all the glee of a small child. “Why are you like this,” Yurio muttered twice more. 

 

“It’s nice to see him cheer up,” Toshiya later commented to Yuuri as they did the dishes. In the next room, Viktor taught Mari creative English swearing while she petted Makkachin for him. 

 

“Eh?” Yuuri said. 

 

“He gets so quiet sometimes,” his father replied. 

 

That… was true. Yuuri felt himself sober slightly as he dried the plates. Viktor had such a bright smile it was easy to forget all the moments where it dimmed. Then again, he’d barely known Viktor two weeks. He didn’t know what was normal for him. 

 

He left the kitchen with the resolve to have a serious conversation with Viktor, but his plans were immediately shattered when he became the object of Viktor’s thousand kilowatt smile. 

 

“Yuuri,” he sang. “Can we go to the back? Mari and I have the best idea.”

 

“It’s the stupidest idea,” Yurio assured him. He then tried to distract Makkachin from Viktor by waving a toy at her. It failed. 

 

Makkachin went with them to the back hallway, Yurio pouting as he also trailed after them. Mari had obtained Viktor’s phone at some point and was grinning like a madwoman. Considering how relaxed she normally was, the expression was terrifying. 

 

The back hallway led to the banquet room and, as such, was filled with flowers. Viktor walked purposefully into the center of the flowers, then winked at Mari. Her grin somehow became more maniacal as she held up his phone and poised her finger to start recording. Viktor nodded at Yurio, who sighed and started playing a song on his own phone. 

 

Yuuri knew Viktor was a Britney Spears fan. One of his earliest exhibition pieces had been to  _ Oops! I Did It Again _ , and there was a vine floating around somewhere of him yelling ‘ _ Leave Britney alone!’ _ at rinkmate Georgi Popovich. 

 

He had not expected Viktor to know the full choreography to  _ Womanizer _ . He choked back laughter. Mari actually cackled. 

 

Funny as it was, Yuuri didn’t know what the point of doing the video in the hallway was until the music reached the chorus. As Britney’s throaty voice declared she knew  _ just what you are _ (and Viktor leaned forward playfully pushed Yuuri’s chest), the music picked up, and the flowers exploded. 

 

Viktor had obviously been going for a cool petal effect. A tasteful number of petals whipping around him while he danced. Instead, Britney belted out  _ WOMANIZER, WOMANIZER _ and all of the flowers were ripped to shreds– stems and all– and tossed into the air. They hurdled around him, almost completely obscuring him from the camera, a maelstrom of vegetation.

 

“ _ Shit! _ ” Mari yelled, then passed the phone to Yurio– who was sneering at the spectacle– so she could lean against the wall and laugh her head off. Makkachin yipped and dove into the leaf whirlwind, snapping at flowers in the air. Viktor continued to dance, completely straight faced. 

 

_ You, you, you are– you, you, you are– _

 

A ghostly hand reach out from the hurricane and flirtily dragged a chilly finger down Yuuri’s chest.

 

Yuuri couldn’t help it. He burst into laughter. His eyes teared up and his stomach hurt. 

 

Makkachin took a flower to her face and sneezed. Viktor missed a beat, and then he broke down into laughter too. The plants fell. Yurio snorted and stopped the recording. 

 

“Have fun figuring out how to post that,” Yurio said, tossing the phone casually to Viktor. It sailed right through him.

 

“Did you just…” Yuuri said delicately. 

 

“Shut up,” Yurio answered, and stomped through the mess on the floor into his room to pretend he hadn’t just forgotten Viktor couldn’t catch things anymore.

 

“It’s been through so much,” Viktor lamented, carefully levitating the phone out of the veritable massacre of flowers.

 

“You’re going to clean this up, right?” Mari said. Tears of laughter streaked down her cheeks, but her eyes were suddenly wary. 

 

The mass of plants rose to about knee height around them, then dropped. 

 

“Umm…” said Viktor. 

 

“Ugh, I’ll get the push broom,” said Mari. 

 

\--

 

Yuuri got up the next morning thinking it would be a normal day. He did his usual morning stretches and went for a run. Viktor, who spent most of his nights trying to work his phone, babbled to him about some new Russian meme. They talked about whether or not Phichit knew his eyebrows were a gift to this world. 

 

“But how could he not know?” Viktor asked as Yuuri gathered clothes to change into after his shower. “He must be proud.  _ I’m _ proud of him.”

 

“He never once bragged about them,” Yuuri said firmly. “He once bragged to me about his toe hair, but never his eyebrows.”

 

Viktor frowned. “Why would he–”

 

“Don’t ask.”

 

After bathing, Yuuri found Viktor staring at his phone. 

 

“Anything interesting?”

 

“I may have made a terrible mistake,” Viktor said. “Or a wonderful decision. It’s often unclear.”

 

Yuuri took the phone in his hands, and scrolled through Viktor’s twitter feed. He had what seemed to be hundreds of subtweets to his second ever ghost-tweet. 

 

> **Viktor Nikiforov** **✔**
> 
> @viktornikiforovsghost
> 
> HHHHHHH hhhhh HHHHHHHHH @HHHHHHH h #HHH

 

This was accompanied by a video. Yuuri assumed the video would be Viktor’s flower storm, but its autoplay revealed it to be not. Yuuri turned on the sound. There was none. 

 

It was a single ice skate, drifting across the rink like a lost puppy. The shot framed so that it was obvious the skate was the only thing in the entire arena, surrounded by empty ice and empty seats. The skate was old with fraying laces, and it slowly circled the ice by itself, as if doomed to wander the ice alone forever. The camera slowly zoomed in on it attempting a sloppy figure eight, and then the video cut off. 

 

“Oh,” said Yuuri. He himself had recorded the skate, guided by Viktor’s invisible ghost hand, after their practice the day before. The frame was shaking slightly because he had been barely able to keep it together. The adventures of the Ice Castle’s Forgotten Single Skate might have been the most hilarious thing he had ever, and would ever, take part in. He’d then sent to video to Viktor’s own phone. 

 

The bizarreness of the video, combined with the cryptic (“cryptic”) message and Viktor’s absence from social media had created a lot of buzz. It really exploded, however, when someone retweeted the video with  _ Mad World _ added to the dejected looking skate. Someone else had added  _ A Thousand Miles _ . Phichit had posted his own version with the X-Files theme only a few hours ago. 

 

They were all tagged #HHH. 

 

“It’s trending,” Viktor said delightedly. 

 

“User HHHHHHH sent you hatemail,” Yuuri said. 

 

“So did a Spanish punk band. I’m so excited.”

 

> **Christophe Giacometti** **✔**
> 
> @cgiacometti
> 
> The return of our cHHHampion. #HHH

 

It was accompanied by the video, this time set to  _ Boulevard of Broken Dreams _ . 

 

“Oh Chris,” Viktor said fondly, then stuck his hand into the phone to try and send his friend a text that contained actual words. 

 

(He’d succeeded only a handful of times so far. Chris replied either way.)

 

\--

 

In a quiet town like Hasetsu, it was easy to forget the silly video you’d made with your ghost soul mate had gone viral over night, or that a punk band kept sending you angry tweets in Catalan. Yuuri went to Minako’s dance studio and she said nothing, only raised her eyebrows suggestively at Viktor. Viktor rotated between poking at his phone and watching Yuuri, and after lunch they went to the Ice Castle to practice choreography. 

 

“I think,” Viktor said while Yuuri guzzled down water, “This method of teaching is slow, but it’s the best we’ve got. We’ll just have to speed up once you’ve got it down. What jumps can you land?”

 

“Uh…” said Yuuri.

 

It was an awkward conversation. Viktor didn’t seem to think he should have to be the one teaching him to land a jump. Then again, Viktor could fly. 

 

“Hm, at least you have good stamina,” Viktor mused.

 

“Thanks?” Yuuri said. 

 

“And I don’t get tired anymore,” Viktor went on, “so I can keep my promise to Yurio while you rest. That’s fine, right?”

 

“It’s fine with me,” Yuuri said, although he would not be surprised if Yurio were upset about the necessity of Yuuri sitting in on all his practice time with Viktor. 

 

Yuuri hadn’t realized he’d been anxious over Viktor’s coaching plan, but he found himself feeling oddly relieved as they walked home. He was still nervous about the potential to make himself look like a fool on the ice, but having an actual plan laid out i front of him made it feel like he could move forward. It was comforting. 

 

What was not comforting was the legal pad Mari handed him, her face bleak with exhaustion. 

 

“What’s this?” he asked, flipping through the pages. There we four pages of phones numbers, names, and companies. 

 

“You’ve got a second wave of interview requests,” she said.

 

When Viktor had first died, they’d gotten several calls from people asking for interviews with the recently deceased Viktor. Yakov had managed to shield them from most of the international coverage, as well as helped them release a press statement. Yuuri had done a single phone interview with a local paper. After the first week, the media buzz had died down. 

 

Mari had spoken in Japanese, but the word for interview was literally _ intabyuu _ and Viktor was smart enough to put the rest together. 

 

“It must be from our video,” he said. “We’re just too hilarious, Yuuri.”

 

Viktor wanted to do an interview. Yuuri wondered if his life would ever stop offering things to worry about. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M BACK. The note at the top was originally typoed as "stop the Naruto reference." Please, please stop me. (But actually, a cookie to anyone who finds it.)
> 
> Discussion over the ice skate vid literally had my friend and I in tears. I hope you also enjoyed Viktor and Yuuri's undead meme antics.
> 
> EDIT: I've now gotten three emails from a phisher at an email address that's just hhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Don't trust anyone or anything named HHHHHHHHHHHH, kiddos.


	4. #katsup

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i gotta admit: i have absolutely no idea what a quad salchow is and probably should not have been allowed into this fandom

“Oh, you  _ do _ speak English!” the woman on the phone said. “That’s great.”

 

It was a very inauspicious comment for scheduling an interview. Yuuri made a face at Viktor, who made a sort of ‘what can you do?’ shrug at him. 

 

Viktor had picked out a European television company with local connections, so they wouldn’t have to travel further than Fukuoka to meet with the correspondent. In Fukuoka they could also buy proper ghost-friendly technology, so Viktor could make his own phone calls. 

 

Across the room, Yurio had sprawled across the Katsuki’s kitchen table as much as he could with his bottom still on the floor. He was typing lazily on his phone. Mari sat across from him, pretending to be doing something on her tablet while she snapped photos. Yuuri wondered if he should say something. 

 

“Yavok wants me to go home,” Yurio complained after Yuuri hung up. “I was just doing what he was too lazy to do himself.”

 

“Steal the dog?” Mari asked. Yurio lifted his head to glare at her and she got a perfect shot. 

 

“I charge for photos, you know,” Yurio said by way of comeback. “At least a thousand yen. I should be charging your family for all the tweets I’ve made about their business.”

 

It was true they’d gotten quite a few out-of-towners wandering in recently. But none of them had come from further than the neighboring prefectures– Hasetsu wasn’t the type of place you made out-of-the-way arrangements for. If the explanation for their appearances was linked to the skaters, it was because of the one interview Yuuri had done, which had included some details about his hometown. 

 

“If a Russian comes to Hasetsu,” Mari said slowly, going through the sentence piece by piece in her brain. “It will be to see Viktor.”

 

Yurio spluttered. Mari’s face stayed expressionless and she snapped another photo. 

 

“If they make any money off of you,” Viktor said in a sing-song voice, “it’ll go towards your debt, freeloader.”

 

The on-coming explosion from Yurio was quelled when Yuuri’s mother appeared with breakfast, Makkachin at her heels. Yuuri was given scrambled egg whites, a modest portion of rice, and miso soup. 

 

“Mom, did you put the extra yolks in my rice again?” Mari asked. The fried egg decorating her rice did indeed have an extra yolk. Yurio’s fried egg– which came with toast because he’d been baffled the first time he’d been given rice for breakfast– similarly bore an extra yolk. It made it look like it was staring up at him. 

 

“You like the yolk,” Hiroko said cheerfully as she placed a plate of dried fish in front of Viktor. “Extra salty!”

 

Viktor blinked at it, then turned to Yuuri. “It’s salted,” Yuuri explained.

 

“You know, Yuuri…” Viktor said. “I think your mother might be the nicest person in the world.” Then he stuck a finger in the plate, and the whole thing cracked in two.

 

“I guess it’s a good thing Viktor brought us an extra set of plates,” Mari said blandly while both Hiroko and Viktor burst into laughter. 

 

\--

 

Since Yurio was being pressured to returned to Russia, Viktor decided now was as good a time as any to share his choreography, even if he hadn’t worked the kinks out yet. Yuuri wondered if Viktor would skate with Yurio like he had been with Yuuri. He hoped not– he doubted Yurio would have the patience for it, and also it felt like… like something intimate, just between the two of them. 

 

Viktor made Yuuri and Yurio stand outside of Yuuko’s office while she and Viktor worked on finding the right song files online. There was absolutely no reason for both Yuris to be excluded from this, other than Viktor was a complete drama king who wanted the music to be a surprise. 

 

“Is he always like this?” Yuuri asked Yurio. This was a rare chance to ask for details while Viktor was distracted. 

 

Yurio rolled his eyes exaggeratedly. “You have no idea. Viktor is the most extra man in all Russia. Once he figures out how to ghost properly, he’ll probably only ever enter rooms by ascending from the floor in a cloud of mist.”

 

“Oh,” Yuuri said. Could he handle that? Maybe if the mist obscured him. Or he could figure out his own entrance. With music, maybe?

 

“Are… are you actually considering that?” Yurio asked. HIs voice contained an odd mixture of disgust and befuddlement.

 

“Do you think it would help Viktor cheer up?” Yuuri asked. 

 

“‘Cheer up’...?” Yurio repeated. “He seems pretty happy to me.” Yurio scuffed his skates against the floor, his face bitter. “You’d think he’d be more upset about throwing away his whole life and abandoning everyone who’s ever supported him, but all he wants to do is play with your dumb hair and make stupid tweets.”

 

Yuuri opened his mouth to say no, that wasn’t true, Viktor frequently lapsed into weird silences and forlorn looks, but what did Yuuri know? Yuuri was Viktor’s soulmate, but Yurio had known Viktor for years and obviously saw him as a sort of mentor. Compared to that, Yuuri was just a fanboy who’d gotten lucky. 

 

Yuuri wanted to ask Yurio– who had been raised by a ghost and her soulmate and had grown up in the same culture as Viktor, surrounded by the same people as Viktor– what being a soulmate actually  _ meant _ , besides being supernaturally bound forever. Could his instincts on Viktor’s feelings trump Yurio’s more experienced observations?

 

He didn’t ask, though, because Yurio was incredibly talented and independent but he was also only fifteen. Maybe he was ignoring Viktor’s weird behaviors because fifteen year olds were selfish like that. Maybe Yuuri was getting worked up over nothing. 

 

“Are you okay?” Yurio asked, sounding not at all like he cared if Yuuri was or wasn’t okay.

 

“Yes, um,” Yuuri said. “I had a thought. Could you teach me how to land a quad Salchow?”

 

Yurio stared at him, incredulous. “You can’t… are you  _ serious _ ?”

 

Yuuri was saved from having to explaining yes, he was completely serious about his own personal failings, by Viktor banging open the office door. 

 

“We’ve got it!” he cried. “I didn’t even short circuit the computer once.”

 

\--

 

Viktor presented them with a pair of arrangements, both for the same song. Yuuri immediately matched the choreography they’d be working on with both songs. He imagined what it would be like to move along to both of them, the sound of skates on ice and the beating of his own heart in his ears complementing the music. 

 

“I want Eros,” Yurio said as soon as Viktor had explained the meaning behind the arrangements. Yuuri was fine with that. 

 

“Hmm,” Viktor, the most extra man in all Russia, pretended to think about it. “Nope! You’ll go with Agape, and Yuuri will do Eros.”

 

“But--” 

 

Viktor wasn’t having it, blithely ignoring Yurio’s complaints as he shooed them off to the side so he could demonstrate his choreography. 

 

“This is so weird,” Yurio muttered halfway through Viktor’s rendition of Agape. “He’s wearing loafers.”

 

Yuuri was currently trying to work out a way to explain why he, a twenty-three year old, wasn’t comfortable with the theme of ‘sexual love.’ Not that he couldn’t do it, he just… didn’t think he could do it in front of a crowd. At least not  _ well _ . He decided to approach the argument from a different angle.

 

“Viktor,” he said, “wouldn’t unconditional love be more like… soulmates?” 

 

Viktor smirked and quirked an eyebrow at him. “Is it?” 

 

Yuuri’s mind slammed to a halt. Was it?  _ Wasn’t it? _

 

They had literally never talked about being soulmates. How to negotiate living together, how to skate, when they could go to Russia so Viktor could visit, sure. But not the most obvious conversation of all. 

 

“I don’t do this emotional crap,” Yurio was saying. “What am I going to do, skate about a high school crush?”

 

“Oh, you have a high school crush? Tell me about them,” Viktor cooed. Yurio went red.

 

“I don’t! I just– I can’t–” he sputtered. Yuuri decided to try and save him from the vampire-like smile spreading across Viktor’s face. 

 

“The theme is ‘unconditional love,’ not romantic love,” Yuuri pointed out. “Surely you have someone you love unconditionally.”

 

Yurio glowered at him, still red, then turned and furiously skated to the other side of the rink to start his own warm-up. 

 

“I don’t remember being this difficult at fifteen,” Viktor said.

 

“I highly doubt that,” Yuuri deadpanned. 

 

“What?”

 

“Nothing.” Yuuri rolled his shoulders, working out the tension. “I guess I should try your choreography with the music this time, right?”

 

Eros did fit the choreography really well. He moved easily through it– Yurio was pointedly ignoring them, and Yuuri was used to Viktor hanging around him every moment of the day, so there was no embarrassment. Still, he felt he was missing something. 

 

When Viktor was satisfied and called Yurio back of to try out the Agape arrangement, Yuuri felt a mean part of his mind feel vindicated that Yurio was missing even more of that something. Even accounting for this being his first time doing the choreography, there was an obvious disconnect between the music and Yurio’s general personality. 

 

“You look like an angry cat,” Viktor teased, and Yuuri squashed his mean feelings to the back of his mind. No point making fun of the kid. 

 

So he offered to give Yurio some tips, in exchange for being taught how to land a quad Salchow.

 

Yurio’s face contorted into new levels of rage. Viktor’s eyes lit up like he was watching schoolyard fight. 

 

“I love seeing my two students helping each other,” he said. Yurio turned on him, yelling some mean sounding Russian. 

 

He really did look like an angry cat. 

 

\--

 

Yurio did eventually break down and give Yuuri some pointers, and in exchange Yuuri brought Yurio to Minako-sensei’s studio and helped him there. Yurio complained endlessly about Viktor’s weird ghost skating, but he also had some sort of epiphany and his routine was improving rapidly. 

 

Meanwhile, Yuuri had stagnated– he didn’t know how to approach ‘sexual love,’ and he didn’t know who to go to about it. Viktor was the obvious choice, since they were stuck together forever, and mystically bound by fate, and all that. But the one time he had approached the subject with Viktor–

 

“I’d love to help you,” Viktor purred, getting right into Yuuri’s face. His hands spread across Yuuri’s chest, icy fingers contrasting with the heat rising in Yuuri’s stomach, and–

 

_ Nope! Nope, nope, nope! _

 

Yuuri panicked and dropped the whole issue. 

 

Here was the thing: Yuuri had been in love with the  _ concept _ of Viktor Nikiforov. The Viktor Nikiforov that flirted with interviewers and skated so beautifully it made Yuuri want to cry. The  _ real _ Viktor Nikiforov was someone else all together. He made silly faces at his dog, spoke bad Japanese to Yuuri’s parents, and thought it was funny to invisibly write messages in the bathroom mirror. He was too blunt with his criticisms, too dismissive of what Yuuri saw as serious problems, and had the dopiest, cutest smile Yuuri had ever seen. 

 

So Yuuri didn’t know how he felt. Viktor was supposed to be his  _ soulmate _ , and that was terrifying. Viktor was handsome and charming and funny, and that was terrifying. Viktor was silently pretending to walk on his ceiling while Yuuri was trying to peacefully have a freak-out in his bed, and that was… well, it was really more annoying than anything. 

 

“You’re not going to be focused in the interview if you don’t sleep,” Viktor commented. 

 

“I can’t sleep while someone’s playing Spiderman,” Yuuri snapped back. 

 

Viktor paused and craned his neck to look at Yuuri. He’d gotten his hair to fall with gravity, as well as the collar of his shirt to flip up. Viktor had died in a dress shirt tucked into his slacks, and Yuuri was pretty sure being upside should shift the weight of the the clothes somehow, but they fell around Viktor as if he were standing upright. 

 

“Is everything alright?” Viktor asked. 

 

“Yes,” Yuuri answered immediately. Viktor tilted his head, and Yuuri couldn’t make out his exact expression in the dark without his glasses. “I’m fine,” he insisted.

 

“You know,” said Viktor carefully, “we’re going to be together forever. You can feel free to talk to me.”

 

Yuuri thought about it. It did seem like they’d just skipped a lot of very important conversations when Viktor had appeared, like “What exactly does ‘soulmate’ mean to you?” or “Please tell me if you secretly resent me for ruining your career.” But then Makkachin whined in her sleep, and Yuuri firmly decided now wasn’t the time. 

 

“It’s fine,” he said, and rolled over and pulled his blanket over his head so he wouldn’t have to stare at stupid sexy upsidedown Viktor. 

 

\--

 

Viktor wasn’t in the room when Yuuri woke. This wasn’t weird– Viktor liked going up through the ceiling to be on the roof, or down into the storeroom below to sort through his things they still hadn’t completely organized. Or, Mari’s room was right next to Yuuri’s, and sometimes Viktor went and talked to her while Yuuri was sleeping and she wasn’t. 

 

(Yuuri had had a lot of fantasies about meeting skating legend Viktor Nikiforov, and none of them had involved him dying or becoming best buds with his sister.)

 

Judging by the noise nextdoor, Viktor had gone to bother Mari, who was an early riser. Yuuri shuffled around his room, getting dressed in his interview clothes and combing his hair. He then went and knocked on Mari’s door.

 

“Yuuri!” Viktor cried as the door swung forward violently and of its own accord, bouncing roughly of the wall. 

 

“Please learn to open doors correctly,” Mari muttered. She was curled up in bed, her tablet resting against a pillow. Viktor was sitting (floating) cross-legged next to her.

 

“Yuuri,” Viktor repeated, leaning backwards ridiculously to look at him. “Your hair! I love it when you comb back your hair.” 

 

He rolled over, crawled across the bed and then the air to run his fingers through Yuuri’s hair. They brushed against his scalp and gave him goosebumps that ran across his scalp and down the back of his neck.

 

“You look good in a tie too,” Viktor practically purred, and Yuuri felt supernatural forces tugging at said tie.

 

“A- _ hem _ ,” Mari said. 

 

“Oops,” Viktor laughed, and she said something about  _ gaijin _ and grabbed her tablet, probably to look up how to properly express her disgust at Viktor’s PDA (phantom displays of affection) in English. 

 

“We were watching some of your old interviews,” Mari said, eyeing him evilly over her tablet. 

 

Yuuri paled. He had done his fair share of interviews and endorsements, but he  _ hated _ cameras. He didn’t even like reviewing videos of his own practices to see where he could improve. If he didn’t need the money or the support, he would never do anything at all that involved a camera and a bunch of strangers. 

 

But obviously being a competitive skater and public figure necessitated the occasional TV appearance or photoshoot, which is why he was awake at 6 AM and wearing a tie. 

 

“I like the one… Mari, show him the one I liked,” Viktor requested.

 

Yuuri remembered giving the interview, but he didn’t realize it had made it to the internet. Some people had been interested in Phichit– who, honestly, had made more progress and cleared more hurdles for Thailand than Yuuri had for Japan– and they’d asked Yuuri a few questions about being Phichit’s rinkmate. 

 

On screen, Yuuri sat with Phichit in the stands of his old rink. Yuuri was smiling shyly at somewhere to the left of the camera, while Phichit grinned cheekily and said, “I promise we didn’t plan this.” He fingered his shirt, which said #MUSTARD. Yuuri, dawning a #KATSUP shirt, laughed quietly. 

 

Behind the camera, the interviewer also laughed. “Okay,” she said, “I wasn’t going to ask, but now I have to know.”

 

“Well, one of the first heart-to-hearts I had with this one,” Phichit said, jabbing a thumb in Yuuri’s direction, “was about how no one here could pronounce our names. I mean, I love it here, but it gets kind of lonely when you’re missing home and people can’t even say your name, right? And my pal Yuuri Katsuki tells me he always introduces himself with a– with a– what’s it called, Yuuri?”

 

“A mnemonic,” Yuuri supplied. 

 

“A mnemonic,” Phichit continued. “And it turns out this guy has been introducing himself as Yuuri Katsuki: Katsuki like ‘catsup,’ but with ‘key’ instead of ‘up.’” 

 

Phichit paused for effect and Yuuri, voice cracking from barely withheld laughter, cut in with, “In my defense–”

 

“No defense, catsup-ki,” Phichit teased back. “That’s not how you say ketchup. That’s not even how you say  _ catsup _ .”

 

“I read it on a bottle!”

 

“It’s a short A! Everything in the US is a short A! What are you, an old British man? ‘ _ Cawtsup _ ,’ jeez.” 

 

They teased each other for a few moments before the interviewer decided to get things back on track. “Okay, but what about the mustard?”

 

“Oh, well,” said Phichit. “If he’s a spicy catsup, obviously I’m a Phichon mustard.”

 

‘Spicy catsup’ was a different story, too far down the well of inside jokes to explain in an interview. It involved a bad Italian accent and a lot of room-temperature PBR. 

 

“You seem like good friends,” the interviewer observed. 

 

Yuuri cleared his throat and smiled. “Yes, we’ve been roommates for about a year and a half now. Plus we practice with each other almost everyday. I can’t imagine skating without Phichit.”

 

“There’s no rivalry?”

 

Both Yuuri and Phichit laughed at that. “No, no,” said Yuuri. “We do our best to support each other. Actually, I think Phichit might be one of the most caring and supportive people I’ve ever met. Not just in skating, but as a friend too.”

 

“Aw, you’re making me blush.”

 

“It’s true, though! Even the curling team likes Phichit, and we keep kicking them out of their practice.”

 

There was a few more minutes of Yuuri talking about how well Phichit got along with everyone. Yuuri himself was surprised at how relaxed he looked– usually even thinking about talking on camera made him clam up. Then the video cut to some filler images of Phichit skating, while the interviewer talked about his reception back in Thailand. Mari paused the video. 

 

“Do you know this one is my favorite?” Viktor asked, smile plastered across his face.

 

“Uh…” said Yuuri.

 

“Because,” said Viktor, “in all your other ones, you choke!”

 

Yuuri’s head fell. Mari’s lips pinched. 

 

“Is that an insult?” she asked in Japanese. 

 

“Look at how stiff you are in this one,” Viktor continued, and Mari jumped as the tablet started navigating through youtube all by itself. Viktor brought up an ad for ClearBlue Pregnancy Tests, squawked, and then successfully opened an interview with Yuuri right after he’d qualified for the Grand Prix Finals. He stood there, a sweaty gleam across his face, back too straight and shoulders too tense, and jittered out some clunky statements about being honored and excited.

 

“See!” said Viktor, pointing violently at the tablet. Google Maps opened and started searching for HHHHHHHHHHH. They all quietly ignored it. “That’s not even the video and I wanted and it proved my point.”

 

“I just really hate the camera,” Yuuri said. “It’s never been a problem.”

 

Celestino had once paid out-of-pocket for someone to coach Yuuri through not looking like he was about to wet himself on camera, but Viktor didn’t need to know that. 

 

“You know I’m not doing an interview about my soulmate without my soulmate on camera with me,” Viktor said seriously. 

 

Yuuri sighed. They’d talked about this. “I know, I know. I dressed up for you, didn’t I?”

 

Viktor paused, eyeing him. “Do you have a different tie?”

 

“What?”

 

“Nevermind. I’ll think of something. Have you tried imagining the audience naked?”

 

Yuuri didn’t have enough words in English or Japanese to explain why that wouldn’t work. He announced he was going to go make breakfast, Mari pointed out they were running late, and he ended up sprinting to the train station without changing his tie. 

 

\--

 

“Take a photo!” Viktor cried, posing by one of the posters of Yuuri in the train station. He had asked for the same photo, in the exact same pose, when they’d gone to Tokyo to visit the Russian embassy. At least this time it was too early in the morning for Ms. Takanaka from the pharmacy to randomly appear and demand to be in the picture with them.

 

Yuuri took the photo. Viktor was still an orb. 

 

“Do you have an extra one?” Viktor asked on the platform. “One of those posters, I mean.

 

Yuuri hadn’t even been aware of the printing of the posters until he’d seen them all over Hasetsu. “Why would I?” he asked. 

 

“For your adoring soulmate?” Viktor tried. 

 

Yuuri shook his head. “What would you even do with it, put it in our room?”

 

“Well I already have to stare at posters of  _ myself _ all night,” Viktor quipped back. “Might as well have some pretty pictures of you up too.”

 

Yuuri’s face went hot. He’d ripped most of the posters off the wall that first night and hadn’t put most of them back, but… the framed ones were his favorites, alright? And some of them had been up so long the wallpaper was discolored under them, so it wasn’t like he could  _ not _ cover that up. 

 

(Viktor had seemed flattered Yuuri had decorated his room with his face. Viktor had even tried to sign one of the posters, missed, and left a very weird looking squiggle on the wall next to it. This was fortunate, as Yuuri didn’t know what he’d do if Viktor Nikiforov had ruined his limited edition poster of Viktor Nikiforov.)

 

“I can ask Phichit…” Yuuri said. His mom might have some posters hidden somewhere too, but Phichit was the one who kept inventory of their respective merchandise. 

 

“Oh, speaking of which,” Viktor started, but then the train arrived. Yuuri boarded through the door, like a normal person, while Viktor ghosted through the wall, arms spread like an ancient philosopher come to distribute enlightenment to the masses.

 

_ Yurio’s right _ , Yuuri thought.  _ He’s never entering a room normally again _ .

 

There were quite a few commuters on the train, but they were early enough on the route that they got seats next to each other, a salaryman napping across of them. Viktor obviously didn't need a seat, but Yuuri didn't know enough about ghost etiquette to know if it was ruder to make Viktor float or for Viktor to take space away from another nap-prone businessman. 

 

“What were you going to say about Phichit?” Yuuri asked a few stops later. A woman with her head in a magazine sat next to the salaryman, a ghost trailing behind her. Viktor was fidgeting with his collar. 

 

“Oh, it was about your interview,” Viktor said. “You get frazzled when you’re by yourself, but you were fine when Phichit was there. Why’s that?”

 

Yuuri blinked. He thought it was rather obvious. “Why would I get nervous talking in front of Phichit?”

 

Viktor continued to claw at his neck. “You were still talking to an entire camera crew.”

 

As for as Yuuri could remember, it had just be a single camerawoman who’d conducted the interview herself, but he supposed Viktor had a point. 

 

“Most people are more confident when they’re with friends…” Yuuri said. Viktor made a few futile tugging motions with his shirt collar. “Are you okay?”

 

“Right,” Viktor said, ignoring the question. “Friends distract you from what’s making you nervous.”

 

“I’m not sure that’s exactly how it works,” Yuuri said, then repeated: “Are you okay?”

 

“As your coach, and more importantly as your soulmate,” Viktor continued, his finger catching on the top button of his shirt, “it’s my job to give you confidence. And I’m sure I can be just as distracting as Phichit.”

 

That statement was probably true, as Yuuri had been so distracted by Viktor’s hands he’d barely registered it. Older ghosts could change their clothes with some effort, but Viktor wasn’t able to adjust his clothing very much at all yet. Undoing the top button of his shirt would be amazing progress. Then Yuuri considered what Viktor had said, in conjecture with what he was doing.

 

“Viktor no!”

 

“Viktor  _ yes _ .”

 

The button came off. If Viktor had been wearing an actual, physical shirt, the button would have popped off and rolled down the train car. Instead, it simply vanished, along with the rest of the buttons, and his shirt fell open. 

 

“ _ Viktor _ ,” Yuuri groaned, covering his face with his hands. 

 

For what it was worth, now the entire car was distracted. 

 

“I…” Viktor started. He stared down at himself, nonplussed. “This wasn't really what I was going for.” He tugged at his shirt. It barely moved, unnaturally hanging from his body in a way that didn't quite follow with how he was sitting. 

 

“What  _ were _ you going for?” Yuuri asked, peeking through his fingers. Viktor’s collar bones and a good part of his chest were now visible. The shirt then rumpled and feel into a frame of a thin line of ghostly skin that ended where his shirt was still tucked into his trousers. 

 

“A sexy but classy clavicle slip,” Viktor said as if that were just a normal thing people said. He pulled at his shirt again and it didn't budge. “This isn't even sexy; it's just ridiculous.”

 

Sitting on a train with your shirt mussed and unbuttoned but still tucked into pristinely ironed pants did look fairly silly. 

 

“If it makes you feel better,” said the ghost with the magazine woman, in carefully pronounced English, “I once accidentally vanished my pants for an entire week.”

 

\--

 

Yuuri spent the rest of the train ride with his body turned toward the window, texting  _ MAYDAY! MAYDAY! _ messages to Phichit, who he secretly blamed for this. 

 

Viktor eventually gave up his seat to an older woman, and he looked even more ridiculous standing up. The shirt was positioned as if he were… as if he were posing sexily, Yuuri guessed, but now it was just floating weirdly. 

 

Phichit eventually texted back the most unhelpful message possible:

 

> **Mustard**
> 
> _ I heard viktor nikiforov had an eight pack. That he was shredded _

 

Yuuri nearly choked. He glanced over at Viktor, who was now trying to pull his shirt out of his pants, insisting to the magazine woman and her ghost it would look less like a bizarre fashion choice if the shirt was at least untucked. 

 

Viktor spent the entire walk to the television station whining about how he was going to look like a “douchebag who went texting and driving with an unbuttoned shirt tucked into his trousers, Yuuri, don’t you see how weird that is?”

 

Yuuri did see how weird it was. It was right in front of him. It was also getting harder and harder not to laugh at Viktor’s dilemma. 

 

“I still don't even understand what you were trying to do,” Yuuri admitted. 

 

“I was going to get you lost in the sexy dips of my collarbones so you could act normal on camera,” Viktor pouted. 

 

That was the most ridiculous thing anyone had ever said to Yuuri. His resolve not to laugh broke. 

  
When they finally found the station, he said, “At least it wasn’t your pants.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Imma take my shirt off." --Viktor Nikiforov's solution to everything
> 
> Yuuri's feeling doubts about himself now, but you KNOW you're destined to be soulmates with someone when they're like "I'm going to enter all rooms now by rising from the floor in a shroud of mist" and your reaction is "okay but what if I added music."
> 
> OH, ALSO, I wanted to thank you for each and every one of your comments. Even the one that just said HHHHHHHH. (ESPECIALLY the one that just said HHHHHHH.) I'm not great at replying but I do make an effort when asked direct questions. Thanks again~


	5. #ghostpost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turns out, I don’t know anything about figure skating or interviews or interviews about figure skating. Why did I choose to write about these things. 
> 
> I do, fortunately, know a lot about ghosts. 
> 
> EDIT: Yuuri does an anxiety-related thing during the interview which I think some might interpret as dissociating...? I figured I should put a warning here for people who might want one.

Viktor squabbled outside the television station for at least ten minutes trying to fix his shirt, at one point demanding “divine inspiration” from Yuuri, who just stared. Phichit sent several texts asking to know what Viktor’s abs were like (“ _ wait, DOES he have an eight-pack? _ ”) and Yuuri replied that unfortunately the unbuttoned shirt didn’t reveal enough of Viktor to distract from how absolutely ridiculous he looked.

 

> **Mustard**
> 
> Well then ask him!!

 

“Phichit wants to know what your abs look like,” Yuuri said.

 

“Washboard,” Viktor said, immediately and without hesitation. “Tablettes de chocolat.”

 

> **You**
> 
> He said something in french 
> 
> I think about chocolate
> 
>  
> 
> **Mustard**
> 
> wtf?
> 
> I refuse to believe that
> 
> u must have worded the question weird

 

“Phichit doesn’t believe you,” Yuuri said.

 

“When I get this shirt off,” Viktor said, suddenly looking more frustrated than Yuuri had ever seen him, “and when we finally get a ghost-proof camera, I am going to mail Phichit an entire slideshow of my beautiful body.”

 

He looked quite determined. 

 

“Please don’t do that,” Yuuri said. “Look, I know you’re frustrated by all this, but it really doesn’t look that bad.” Yuuri paused, trying to look at Viktor critically. The rumpled shirt was… well, it didn’t exactly match Viktor’s fashionista image, but it was cute. And at least he hadn’t vanished his pants and was stuck going in in his ghost-undies and shoes. “You look nice.”

 

The determined gleam to send weird pictures to Yuuri’s best friend slowly faded from Viktor’s eyes, and a soft smile spread across his face. 

 

“You’re right. Who cares if I look like a jackass? I’m dead. Let’s go.”

 

The inside of the television station wasn’t much to write home about– the foyer boasted cheap carpeting and florescent lighting. A man at the front desk signed them in and gave them directions to the recording studio where one Ms. Nila Korhonen was setting up with her crew. 

 

Korhonen looked rather frazzled when they walked in, and the first thing she said was, “Oh my.”

 

Yuuri glanced nervously at Viktor-- who had been on the brink of hysterics only minutes before-- but the man had settled his most charming camera smile into place and it didn't budge. 

 

“We got a little handsy,” he said with a wink, and if they hadn't been in public Yuuri would have considered smacking him, ghost or not. 

 

Korhonen laughed, apparently interpreting that as a joke, and then, to Yuuri’s horror, said, “He'll have to match.”

 

She was without a doubt talking about Yuuri. 

 

Viktor just raised an eyebrow as Korhonen summoned an intern to maladjust his wardrobe. Yuuri was instructed to removed his tie, leaving him vaguely wondering if the whole fiasco were some sort of genius plot on Viktor’s behalf to get him to change the tie. He was then told to undo the first button on his shirt, and the intern arranged it to look casually but stylishly rumpled. It was, ironically, probably the exact look Viktor had been going for. 

 

“Yes, I think a sexy yet classy clavicle slip should do it,” Korhonen said, eyeing Yuuri, who couldn’t believe that was apparently something people said. “Maybe muss up his hair a bit.”

 

The intern gave Yuuri an apologetic look before sticking her fingers his hair. Viktor wolf-whistled, a self-fulfilling prophecy of jackassery. 

 

After that, Korhonen and Viktor were all business, talking about Korhonen’s outline for the interview and where the cameras would be. Yuuri stood next to Viktor, feeling like a slightly deflated third wheel. This was probably the fanciest interview he’d ever been involved in. First of all, it was in an actual studio, even if it was a cheaply-decorated set in Fukuoka. Secondly, Korhonen’s crew had three cameras.  _ Three _ . Why?  _ Why? _

 

To catch his nervous twitches from every possible angle, he supposed. 

 

At one point, Korhonen shot Yuuri a guilty look and said, “My network doesn't cater to sports fans, and we broadcast primarily in Europe, so… We'll need to explain who you are.”

 

The intern shoved a styrofoam cup filled with terrible coffee into his hand. “Um,” said Yuuri, feeling like he suddenly needed to defend why he was allowed in Viktor’s presence at all.

 

Viktor came to his rescue immediately, thank God. “He's the number one Japanese skater. Japan’s Ace. What more do you need to say?”

 

Korhonen shrugged and moved on to asking how much they were okay talking about their home life, which was a fairly invasive subject but somehow made Yuuri relax slightly. He'd grown up promoting his family home, after all, and was good at separating “family-friendly public details” from “my weird private life.”

 

When the cameras were prepped and they finally sat down for the interview itself, Yuuri had had three of the terrible coffees and was positive he has going to vibrate out of his own skin at any second. 

 

Next to him, Viktor was giving off a different kind of energy than Yuuri had ever seen from him in person– calm, confident, straight-backed but still somehow loose and casual. It made his ridiculous open shirt look natural. His interview face, Yuuri realized. 

 

Briefly, Yuuri wondered if this was the version Viktor he’d fallen in love with. That thought, however, was quickly discarded: the Viktor that made him fall at first sight was and always would be the Viktor that moved across the ice like he'd invented it.

 

_ This  _ Viktor, though. This Viktor was reassuring. This Viktor had publicity in the bag; there was no need to worry. The rushing in Yuuri's ears could stop now, thank you very much, there was no need. 

 

The start of the interview was normal chatting, getting both Viktor and Korhonen comfortable talking to each other. Most of it would be cut, unless Viktor said something particularly attention-grabbing. 

 

“Yes, you could say I  _ drove myself to an early grave _ ,” Viktor joked. Korhonen tittered. Yuuri did his best to keep his face straight while his soul left his body to join Viktor’s floating an inch above the couch they were on. Not literally, of course, but that had been  _ wildly inappropriate _ . 

 

Eventually, Korhonen started asking actual questions, and Yuuri felt his whole body go stiff. 

 

_ Rigor mortis _ , declared a voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Viktor. 

 

Viktor. He should focus on Viktor. Viktor, who was perfectly relaxed and had tried to take off his shirt for him. Viktor, who was completely ridiculous. 

 

Yuuri felt his stiff interview smile melt into something more genuine. 

 

\--

 

Korhonen, who seemed to want to ruin Yuuri’s life, sent a cameraperson after them when they left to get filler shots of them walking around town. Yuuko had taken some footage of their practice the day before and sent that along, but apparently that wasn’t enough. 

 

Korhonen had wanted them take a stroll along the beach, but as soon as they left the building, Viktor informed the cameraperson that wasn’t happening. They were going shopping. 

 

Yuuri almost wished they had just gone to the beach, because it was out of season so at least there wouldn’t be a ton of people staring at them. As it were, they walked a kilometer to a mall, with people ogling at them the entire way. They probably looked like the set-up for some sort of joke: a washed-out skater, a foreign ghost and a cameraperson walk into a mall. 

 

They went to the food court first, and Viktor encouraged Yuuri to cheat on his athlete’s diet and get a burger for lunch. 

 

“You deserve it,” Viktor said, making the motions of patting his shoulder even if it felt like a cool, gentle breeze. “You’re practically vibrating.”

 

“I’m pretty caffeine sensitive,” Yuuri said, which was true, even if his shaking was at least partially from anxiety. “But if you’re going to give me a cheat day, I’d rather have my mom’s cooking tonight.”

 

“That’s fair,” Viktor agreed. “But we’re getting ice cream later.”

 

Yuuri snorted. “Sure,” he said.

 

Yuuri ordered some fish and steamed vegetables, which he wolfed down because even though Viktor made the cameraperson stop filming while Yuuri ate, it was still a  _ camera _ and people were  _ staring _ . He felt like people were watching them all the way to their first stop at the shopping center. 

 

Luckily, once they’d been in the tech store for a couple minutes, the employees and shoppers accepted their presence and went back to whatever they were doing. 

 

Then Viktor descended on the cameras. 

 

He took  _ so many selfies _ .

 

“Can I help you?” a teenaged employee asked in English. Her nametag read Yukiko. 

 

“Yes,” Viktor answered immediately. “We need a high-quality spectral-imaging capable camera. I’d like a personal one and maybe a couple of mobile attachments.”

 

Yukiko stared at him for a quarter of a second, then turned turned to Yuuri with wide eyes hiding just the quietest plea for help. Yuuri knew that face. He had made that face throughout his entire first year in the US. Phichit made that face whenever their Boston-native neighbor tried to talk to him. That was the “I have greatly overestimated my language skills and have no idea what you just said” face.

 

He could translate, but that seemed rude since she’d approached them in English, so he said: “We want a ghost camera. He also wants one for his phone.”

 

“And one for your phone,” Viktor corrected. “Maybe your mom’s too.”

 

“Ah,” Yukiko said, nodding, then gave what was obviously a practiced spiel about the different options they offered. “But, you know, there are new mobiles with ghost-cameras inside,” she finished. 

 

“I thought those exploded,” Viktor said. “I mean,  _ I’m _ already dead, but I want to keep this one around.”

 

He jabbed a thumb at Yuuri and winked. Yuuri blushed. The girl giggled and shook her head. 

 

“We don’t sell those. There are some competitors. Nokia, for example…”

 

Cameras and recording devices in general were highly finicky about ghosts, and virtually no mobile device came with a ghost-proof camera standard. Attachment cameras had been around for a while, but only very recently were major companies selling phones with internal ghost-cameras (for an extra fee, of course). 

 

Unfortunately, the most famous example also happened to be a model that overheated and exploded. Other companies had started installing them, but they were generally poor quality.

 

“I’ve always been an iPhone man…” Viktor said, very carefully levitating a cellphone. Yukiko did not look nearly as nervous about this as she should be. 

 

“The phone released next month will have an optional ghost-camera,” Yukiko chirped immediately, the faithful salesgirl. “You can pre-order one from our store.”

 

“Hmm,” said Viktor, tapping his chin. 

 

“Or you can order online if you want time to think,” Yukiko continued. After a thought she reiterated, “From our store.”

 

Viktor decided to think on it, and Yukiko found them an affordable ghost-friendly landline phone. They played around with some very expensive tablets that could recognize ghost-fingers as well as they could recognize living ones, and Viktor insisted Yuuri try a virtual reality system. Yukiko set up a game where he adopt and care for a virtual puppy. Viktor baby-talked to it. 

 

Then they moved back to the cameras, which Viktor tested very thoroughly by taking selfies with Yuuri, the cameraperson, Yukiko, and a random other ghost in the store. 

 

Eventually they bought two ghost-camera mobile attachments, a regular camera, a ghost-proof phone, some spectrelectrical grounders so Viktor would stop zapping things, and the tablet. Yuuri’s hand shook as he handed over Viktor’s credit card. 

 

He knew Viktor was loaded. He had access to all his banking information. But still. He was  _ impulse buying _ a  _ tablet _ .  

 

Who  _ did _ that?

 

Yukiko scribbled her email down on a store card (Yuuri assured her he could read the Japanese perfectly well) so they could contact her if they needed more. 

 

“She was so nice,” Viktor said as they left. “Should I try to find her on twitter? Insta? How old do you think she was? I try not to follow minors.”

 

“Uh…” Yuuri said. 

 

“You wouldn’t understand her posts anyway,” the camraperson said.

 

Viktor pouted. “I’ve been doing duolingo every night…”

 

Viktor had not gotten very far in duolingo, since he could barely type. Still, he could understand some basic conversation in Japanese and read the most common of kanji, at a level that surprised even Yuuri. However, he still struggled with conveying anything more complicated than “I like Hiroko-san’s tsukemono,” and a young woman’s informal tweets were probably years beyond him. Yuuri thought this was okay, though. Japanese was a difficult language to learn, ghosts supposedly had a lower neuroplasticity than the living, and it wasn’t like Yuuri himself spoke any Russian. He’d taken a semester in the hopes of understanding some of Viktor’s Russian-language posts, and he still couldn’t say much more than _ dasvidanya _ . 

 

“She didn’t recognize you,” Yuuri said, by which he meant, “Maybe you shouldn’t blow up a random person’s twitter who doesn’t realize what she’s gotten herself into.” Viktor raised his eyebrows like Yuuri had perhaps meant, “If she’s not a fan, she’s not worth it.”

 

“I–I mean,” Yuuri stuttered, but then Viktor was nodding. 

 

“Yes, I don’t think she  _ wants _ me to follow,” Viktor said. “Her intentions were pure.”

 

Yukiko’s intentions were obviously to have higher sales, but none of them said anything. Instead, they made their way to the ghost specialty store, where Korhonen’s cameraperson got the most embarrassing filler footage of all. 

 

For one thing, the store had weird… ghost… gloop.

 

It was marked as “ectoplerm.” It smelled like a cleaning product. It looked like green slime. And it coated Viktor’s hand as if his hand were actually solid. 

 

“Yuuri,” Viktor rasped, caressing his face.

 

“I don’t like this,” Yuuri said, his face being caressed by ghost gloop.

 

“Is my kink not your kink?” Viktor asked, mockingly hurt. He did draw his hand back, to be fair. 

 

“We have self-heating–” the salesperson started to say.

 

“ _ No _ ,” Yuuri interrupted. 

 

Viktor then spent over an hour playing with various ghost-friendly toys, which included a mirror that showed his reflection even when he went invisible, “easy-levitation dehumidifiers” for ghosts who lived in humid climates and whom were plagued by condensation, and ghost-tasers that gave off mild electric shocks that made him giggle. He bought a book on materializing clothes (which came with a magazine of different, easily envisioned styles) and sniffing salts that supposedly gave ghosts highs.

 

“To celebrate when you win,” Viktor said. “I’ve already picked you out a brand of champagne. Oh, but the Grand Prix Final is in Barcelona this year, isn’t it? Should I change it to cava?”

 

Yuuri’s face was hot. “You might be getting ahead of yourself there. I haven’t even qualified yet.”

 

Viktor waved his hand dismissively. “Even if you don’t perfect Eros in time, you’ll still blow away the competition at Nationals.”

 

Yuuri couldn’t tell if Viktor’s confidence made him more or less nervous. 

 

They didn’t get ice cream because Yuuri was lactose intolerant, but they did go into a candy store and Yuuri filled a bag with gummies for his mom and sister, who both loved them. Viktor dragged them into a few high-end fashion stores that Yuuri felt uncomfortable just standing in, and then the cameraperson started grumbling about wanting to go home. 

 

Yuuri didn’t understand why the cameraperson didn’t just leave, but he was tired too and coaxed Viktor to leave buying him a “proper suit and tie” for another day. 

 

“So,” the cameraperson said as they left the mall, “beach next?”

 

Yuuri winced. Viktor whistled.

 

“Is Ms. Korhonen going to pay for the cab?” Viktor asked.

 

The cameraperson shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

 

Viktor turned to Yuuri. “What do you think?”

 

Yuuri sighed. “I guess. But you’re carrying the bags.”

 

They walked down the beach at sunset, the cameraperson following at a distance. It looked disgustingly romantic on the final cut of the interview. 

 

\--

 

The day after the interview, Viktor let Yuuri sleep in, and after that it was business as usual. Mari teased Yurio at breakfast, Yurio and Viktor said awkward thank yous in Japanese to Yuuri’s parents, and the the rest of the day was spent at the Ice Castle. Yuuri put in a few more evenings at Minako-sensei’s dance studio, and Viktor reached level 16 of the Kim Kardashian App.

 

He married his in-game ghost boyfriend. 

 

“Why does he look like me?” Yuuri asked. 

 

“Because I can gift him make-overs,” Viktor said. “Do you want to see me gift him a nice tie?”

 

Yuuri rolled his eyes. The digital couple had a baby named Yuratchka. Yuuri didn’t ask about that one. He didn’t know what was more horrifying: Viktor naming his fake-child after Yurio, or Viktor naming his fake-child after  _ him _ . 

 

Viktor photographed all this religiously with his new camera, and finally figured out how to post photos himself. The ghost-friendly tablet made him capable of responding to professional emails himself and advancing in duolingo, but he still stuck to his phone for most online tasks. It was, he explained, good practice. 

 

Viktor’s various social media accounts had gained a huge influx of followers since his death, even more when that video had gone viral, and now there were multiple fan-accounts dedicated to interpreting Viktor’s #ghostposts. The caption “shhhheep” on a six second video of Yuuri falling asleep on his empty breakfast plate sparked debate. Did he mean Yuuri was counting sheep, or did he mean “sleep”? Meanwhile, a picture taken from their roof of his ghostly hand held out in front of sunrise, captioned “lever dude,” led to wild theories. It didn’t help that he’d posted it six times.

 

Yuuri hadn’t even noticed all this happening, until Phichit texted him to ask if “lever dude” was some sort of obscure  _ Emperor’s New Groove _ reference. 

 

> **You**
> 
> He says it was supposed to say sunrise in french
> 
> But his phone was set to english and it autocorrected
> 
> It made him laugh and that made it post a bunch of times
> 
> ““Accidentally””
> 
>  
> 
> **Mustard**
> 
> I sense you’re implying something here
> 
> Perhaps that your lifetime hero and soulmate is an actual troll
> 
> But perhaps not
> 
>  
> 
> **You**
> 
> Shhhh
> 
>  
> 
> **Mustard**
> 
> I cant believe you didnt notice all the fan accounts
> 
> Two months ago youd be running one
> 
>  
> 
> **You**
> 
> You know im just a lurker
> 
>  
> 
> **Mustard**
> 
> Tru 
> 
> You'd just be sending me screen caps
> 
> And ranting about how everyone’s wrong
> 
> “Viktor’s fav jello is RED doesn't EVERYONE know that”
> 
>  
> 
> **You**
> 
> It's green actually 
> 
> besides
> 
> I havent been paying attention to viktor nikiforov media buzz much lately
> 
> Since he, yknow, is here
> 
> All the time
> 
>  
> 
> **Mustard**
> 
> Forever
> 
>  
> 
> **You**
> 
> Forever
> 
> Haha
> 
>  
> 
> **Mustard**
> 
> I looked up lever dude
> 
> Lever du soleil
> 
> He should have written it ‘souleil’
> 
> Lever dude SOULeil
> 
>  
> 
> **You**
> 
> He doesnt think thats funny
> 
> I didnt even tell him that joke was from you :’(
> 
>  
> 
> **Mustard**
> 
> Wtf? ur stealing my jokes now???
> 
> im offended at viktor too that joke is hilarious
> 
> Youre both disappointments

 

One morning soon after, Yurio announced, “I have a flight back to Russia tomorrow.”

 

There was a long silence.

 

“Sorry,” Maru said. “I think Small-Yuri is saying he is leaving with no warning. Am I correct?”

 

She said it like she was asking Yuuri for comprehension confirmation, except she said it in English, so obviously she understood. 

 

“I can’t stay here forever,” Yurio snapped. “I was supposed to bring the dog here, and that’s it.”

 

Yurio had very obviously only come to whine at Viktor, and wasn’t ‘supposed’ to bring Makkachin anywhere, but that didn’t stop Hiroko from kidnapping him from practice to visit all the souvenir stores in Hasetsu. It was very important to her all of Yurio’s friends and family back home got souvenirs. Not that Yurio understood anything she was saying. 

 

“Now that he’s gone,” Viktor said after Hiroko had dragged him off. “We need to talk about Eros.”

 

Yuuri’s palms went sweaty. He knew his performance was nowhere near his own potential. Minako had helped him improve the routine quite a bit by switching his approach to a more feminine one, but he’d just hit another ceiling. He’d told Viktor the theme might be impossible for him as he was now, but they both knew that was just an excuse. 

 

“Nationals are almost here, and as your coach it’s my job to push you to new limits…” Viktor started babbling. He’d given a version of this speech at least five times before, except now Nationals were less than two weeks away and Yuuri really hadn’t made many improvements. Yuuri stared at Viktor’s shoes. 

 

“...should I make a mail order for the ectoplerm?” Viktor finished, and _ that _ was a new addition to the speech. 

 

“N-no!” Yuuri protested. “Why do you always make weird jokes instead of real advice?”

 

“Excuse me?” Viktor countered. “I’m just trying to push you–”

 

“Well you’re not doing a very good job of it, are you?” Yuuri snapped back, his face going red. “I need support and advice, not– not constantly being pushed out of my comfort zone.”

 

Viktor blinked, annoyance fading. “Your comfort zone? I didn’t realize–”

 

“You didn’t realize you make me uncomfortable?” Yuuri’s voice was shaking. He was over-reacting and didn’t know how to stop. “You’re always joking– about us, about you dying– and even when I ask you to stop you do it again and again–”

 

“Yuuri–”

 

“You never _ listen _ –”

 

“Yuuri, you should have told me–”

 

“Nevermind.” Yuuri inhaled a long, shuddering breath. He needed to stop wherever this was going. “Nevermind,” he repeated. “I’ll– I’ll just try it again.”

 

And he did, and it was awful. 

 

“I think we should call it a day,” Viktor ventured after Yuuri fumbled a basic step sequence for a second time. Yuuri assented, and they had the most awkward walk home yet. 

 

\--

 

Yuuri didn’t bring up his blow-up again, and while Viktor shot him weird moping looks several times that indicated he  _ wanted _ to say something, he never did. Yurio left without indicating he noticed anything between them, and his departure was distraction enough that Yuuri’s family didn’t seem to notice either. 

 

The awkwardness faded slowly, and they were nearly back to normal by the time the interview finally aired. They had to watch it online, and Viktor had Yukiko send them a cable to hook Yuuri’s laptop up to Yu-topia Inn’s television. Several of Toshiya and Minako’s drinking buddies showed up, as well as the Nishigori family and Ms. Takanaka, the pharmacist who’d wanted a picture with Viktor at the train station. 

 

“Yuuri is so handsome,” she said when his face first graced the scene. Yuuri watched it through his fingers, the way he used to watch horror films when he was a kid. He was tempted to get up and leave, but that would drag Viktor along with him. 

 

“Oh good, they got rid of that tie,” Mari drawled, and the crinkled of annoyance in the back of Yuuri’s head at that was enough to give him the strength to keep watching. 

 

The interview was a segment Korhonen periodically hosted about recent celebrity deaths. She started off with a spiel about Viktor’s life– five time world champion, hailed as a skating god, the Usain Bolt of skating, blah blah blah– and then she cut to Viktor egging Yuuri on in the virtual reality game, explaining that Viktor now found himself in Japan. 

 

(Oh yes, the high tech gaming system where Yuuri could walk a dog in a digital world. Of  _ course _ that’s how she wanted to introduce Japan.)

 

“So what were your first thoughts?” Korhonen asked, and Yuuri realized he had absolutely no idea what happened in this interview. He had vague memories of some of his own answers, and of staring at Viktor the whole time, but almost nothing of what Viktor had actually said. Apparently nerves were as bad as alcohol for him. 

 

“Believe it or not, I didn’t actually think I was dead,” TV-Viktor said. “I remembered speeding straight for a tree, but then– I don’t know what I thought was happening. Then I saw his face, and I just thought, ‘Oh no, I really missed this one up.’ But at the same time, Japan was exactly where I wanted to be.”

 

“So you’d met your soulmate before?” Korhonen asked. 

 

“Yes,” Viktor nodded. “We met at the Grand Prix Final the previous season.”

 

This cut to some footage from the Grand Prix, and an explanation of what it was, but then–

 

“I’ve admired Yuuri’s skating for a while now,” Viktor continued, “and he sort of brushed me off when we first met–”

 

What.

 

“–but I definitely felt a connection when we finally got to talk at the banquet.”

 

_ What _ . 

 

“Did you know you were soulmates?” Korhonen asked.

 

Viktor laughed good-naturedly. “No, but I was definitely interested in him, if you know what I mean. Actually, he had me considering coaching him even before–”

 

_ WHAT _ .

 

Viktor started talking about how he’d been at an impasse in his career ad had been considering retiring anyway, but Yuuri was barely paying attention. The sound of the TV faded to static, and all Yuuri could make out clearly was his own heartbeat. He had messed up. He had messed up big time. 

 

He didn’t remember the banquet. At all. What had he done?  _ What had he done? _

 

“–so maybe dying was a blessing in disguise,” TV-Viktor said, and Yuuri definitely remembered that because it had upset him. On TV, he pressed his lips together in quiet disapproval. 

 

So why couldn’t he remember Viktor being  _ definitely interested _ in him?

 

“Are you okay?” Viktor whispered in his ear. “We can leave if you want. I’ll just watch it later, when you’re asleep.”

 

“I’m fine,” Yuuri squeaked back, his voice weirdly high-pitched. “I just need to ask you something. Uh, later.”

 

TV-Viktor then started talking more seriously about their current goals together, about the “privilege getting to know Yuuri as both a skater and a person.” Both TV-Yuuri and the actual Yuuri turned bright red. Minako cooed.  

 

There were some normal scenes of their practice together, and then a clip of them squatting on the ice together and giggling. It was taken from the opposite side of the rink. 

 

Then Korhonen’s voiceover started talking about that stupid HHH video. The video played, along with a montage of comments, and then it cut back to the shot of them giggling like children. Viktor flipped upside down, and Yuuri laughed so hard he lost his footing and fell from a squat onto his butt. The camera– which was positioned right at the height of the barrier to the rink, the exact height of a certain set of triplets– scooted towards them. 

 

“We found a truly ancient skate in the locker room, and just started playing around with it,” Viktor’s voice-over explained as the camera moved.

 

Right, okay. Yuuri vaguely remembered Korhonen asking about the video. It was basically the only real news the general public had gotten about them, after all. But he didn’t realize Yuuko had sent Korhonen… whatever  _ this _ video was. 

 

Viktor went invisible, and the camera angled to show the skate move across the ice. It was almost the same video as the vine, except from a slightly different angle. And filled with the sounds of Yuuri’s whooping laughter. 

 

“Sh–!” Yuuri’s swear was censored as Viktor’s hand flickered over the skate. “You’re visible!”

 

“Ack!” Viktor said, and the skate started spinning rapidly as he removed his hand. This, of course, only made Yuuri laugh harder. 

 

The scene cut back to the interview set. “You both seem very happy together,” Korhonen observed. 

 

Yuuri nodded animatedly. She’d talked to him specifically for at least ten minutes before she’d asked this question, but the edit made it seem like he’d volunteered himself for the question. 

 

“Yes, of course,” TV-Yuuri answered. “I mean, I can’t speak for Viktor–” he blushed and glanced over at his soulmate. “–but I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.” 

 

Both TV-Viktor and real Viktor beamed at him.

 

“AAAW!” the Nishigori triplets chorused. Yuuri buried his hands in his face. They didn’t even know what he was saying! 

 

TV-Yuuri blabbered on about how Viktor crashing into his life had been hectic but overall had been wonderful, and then Korhonen concluded with some gushy statement as the footage of them walking down the beach played. There was a final shot of Yuuri landing a jump, and Korhonen urged her watchers to “watch out for the skating duo at Japanese Figure Skating Championship.”

 

Yuuri finally let out his breath. 

 

“Yuuri! You’re so handsome!” Hiroko cried, throwing her arms around him. She hadn’t understood 99% of what was said in the interview. “Viktor too!”

 

There was some congratulating all around from their guests, and then one by one they left. 

 

“What did you want to ask me?” Viktor asked when they were finally alone. “You’re really tense. I know ectoplerm grosses you out, but I give a really good backrub–” 

 

“Viktor,” Yuuri said. Viktor shut up. “I. Uh. Okay. Uh…”

 

There were four thousands thoughts running through his head and all he could think was  _ WHAT DID I DO AT BANQUET _ . 

 

“About. About when we met–”

 

Viktor nodded intently, and then… disappeared. 

 

“Viktor,” Yuuri repeated. “You’re invisible again.”

 

Silence.

 

“Viktor, I’m trying to tell you something,” Yuuri said. No reply. “Um, are you okay? Viktor?”

 

Nothing. Viktor was gone. 

 

\--

 

“The  _ fuck _ ?” someone said. She was holding a bottle of Lemoncello. 

 

“Holy shit,” another woman said, having apparently dropped her drink. Dark, alcohol-scented liquid puddled out around her.  “I can’t believe that worked.”

 

Viktor had no idea where he was. He was in… someone else’s house… staring at a particularly hideous sectional couch. Someone was passed out on it, sharpie doodles drawn across her face and arms. His own damn interview was on the TV behind him, and a ouija board was spread out on the coffee table.

 

He should have seen this one coming. 

 

A third woman, who was holding the ouija board’s pointer, whooped in triumph, and grabbed the bottle of Lemoncello from her accomplice. She took a swig. 

 

Who drank  _ Lemoncello _ from the  _ bottle _ ?

 

“Quick– wha– what’d’we ask him?” the Lemoncello bottle shot monster asked. 

 

“I’m…” slurred the woman who’d dropped her drink. “I’m gonna punch the ghost.”

 

“Ghost? More like  _ GILF _ ,” hollered the first woman. She reclaimed the bottle of Lemoncello and took a drink herself, apparently because these people were uncultured heathens. 

 

“Wouldn’t it be pr’nounced JILF?” mumbled the person on the couch. 

 

Viktor very distinctly wanted out of here. 

 

“How’d’ya…. Um…” The woman with the pointer said, apparently very intent on the idea of summoning a celebrity ghost and asking him questions. “Ice jump?”

 

“JILF! JILF! JILF!” the one with the Lemoncello started chanting. The one who wanted to punch him started to draw her fist back. 

 

Viktor put on his crowd-pleasing smile to try and calm them down, even as his brain started to chant  _ there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home _ . He had, after all, dealt with drunk fans before, but certainly after he’d been summoned against his ghostly will–

 

The entire interaction lasted about ninety seconds, and then his as back at the bar in Hasetsu. 

 

\--

 

“VIKTOR!” Yuuri was in his face immediately, and put both arms right through him as if he were trying to hug him. He couldn’t, of course, and would have fallen on his face if Viktor hadn’t psychically caught him. 

 

“Where did he go?” Hiroko asked, looking not quite as panicked but equally worried. The entire finally had gathered in Yuuri’s bedroom.

 

“You don’t do that on… not accident!” Mari yelled, shaking her fist at Viktor. 

 

“‘On purpose,’” Viktor provided. “It wasn’t on purpose, though. I was… summoned.”

 

There was silence, and all three of the other Katsukis turned to Yuuri in confusion. 

 

“Like… with a ouija board?” Yuuri asked, nose wrinkling. “I didn’t think that was real.”

 

“Well apparently it is,” Viktor said. Then in a whine, he added, “It was so awful, Yuuri.”

 

Yuuri sighed, and turned to explain to his family what happened. 

 

“Were they fans?” Mari said. 

 

“Maybe,” Viktor said. “They certainly got the idea from watching Korhonen’s segment.”

 

“Could this happen again?” Toshiya asked. “Maybe you should see an expert.”

 

Yuuri translated for Viktor, then tacked on, “But Nationals are this week. We won’t have time.”

 

Viktor sighed. “We’ll figure something out. We’re both too stressed to think of anything now. Hot springs, I think, and then bed.”

 

Yuuri nodded. That was definitely a better idea than googling ‘top ten times an exorcist summoned a ghost and then killed them.’ A much better idea. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY GUYS so first I’d like to say that I didn’t expect this chapter to take three months to write, but y’know…. sometimes that’s just how it goes. I did really appreciate all the comments I got in the meantime, and they definitely played a factor in me re-motivating myself to keep writing. 
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> -This chapter just sort of ignores time zones. SHRUG.
> 
> -At first I had Viktor described as “the Michael Phelps of skating.” The idea is that, while the average person can’t name a famous skater (or swimmer), Viktor is just So Good At Winning that he’s a household name despite his sport not being particularly popular, just like Michael Phelps is the only swimmer I (and probably a lot of people) can name. However, I’m not actually sure what Phelps’s fame is like outside the US, while I’ve heard multiple Europeans talk about Usain Bolt. Hence, the change. 
> 
> -Despite what the tag might say, I do have a v e r y vague outline for this story, which I have projected to be nine chapters. That could change; maybe I’ll be struck by inspiration for ghost-things and add a chapter or two. Maybe it’ll be less because my outline for one chapter is literally just “cup of china” followed by a bunch of question marks. We’re over halfway there… t h e o r e t i c a l l y.
> 
> -I actually really like the Kim Kardashian game. 
> 
> Anyway, if you like something, or hated something, or just wanna say hey, drop me a comment! I’m also on tumblr, username exemplarybehaviour. (THUMBS UP)

**Author's Note:**

> Stay tuned for more ghost shenanigans..............
> 
> Comments, questions, complaints? Like it? Hated it? Please drop me a comment. :)


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